Dr. David Nabarro:

I thank the Deputy for both questions. People who are blind or disabled and need personal care, people who have dementia, people who are mentally ill and people who are, frankly, claustrophobic will all be at greater risk of contracting the virus. I do not know myself of any physical conditions that would make people more likely to be infected as opposed to physical conditions that make them more likely to suffer more seriously. I need a bit of notice on that one.

I see an increasing number of reports of people who have had Covid and have either had a really long and difficult recovery or have not yet recovered. These include people I know so it has become quite personal from me. One of the things is a very long period of being extremely tired so people just cannot walk to the shops or cannot concentrate on their work. One colleague, a professor, had it two months ago as far as I can remember. I remember being with him on a Zoom seminar when he said he was feeling rotten. I told him I thought he had the Covid and that he had better go and isolate. It turned out he had and he is still finding it hard. He is encountering many others who tell him that it is difficult. We need to hold on to this. For an awful lot of people this is not a trivial illness from which they recover and there is a long post-viral period. I have a number of friends and colleagues who are physically fit and do a lot of exercise.

When they have had Covid, there is a quite a long period in which they remain short of breath on exertion and some of them perceive that they may have long-term lung damage. So keep a look out for that. As members will have heard, there are people who, because of the effect Covid on blood vessels, get clots in their bloodstream, which then can give them a stroke or even a heart attack.

I want to stress that I think we are just at the beginning of understanding both the overall pathology of this in terms of the kind of illnesses it can cause and also the long-term sequelae of this. I would ask all employers and family members to be very patient if somebody has had Covid and is clearly still struggling. That is not because they are in any way malingering, that may well be because this is what this disease seems to do to some. It makes them unwell and unable to function fully for quite a long time. I am so grateful to the Deputy for asking that question.