Professor Orla Hardiman:

I do not think we know enough yet to be able to answer that. Quite a lot of work is being done to try to understand whether the virus gets into the brain. It probably does not but we do not really know. It certainly gets into the part of the brain that is responsible for smell. The longer-term disability associated with that is very real. It needs, again, much disciplinary care, which includes colleagues in the areas of physiotherapy, occupational therapy, neurology, respiratory illness, cardiology and infectious disease.

From a neurology point of view, that sort of multidisciplinary engagement is very close to what we need in these other conditions where the scan might be normal but the person has a very bad disability. That is called functional neurology. Part of the development we see in the context of long Covid is to at the same time actually develop services for functional neurology and functional neurological disorders. In our submission to the Estimates, we reference the need for, again, multidisciplinary integrated care for people with long-term functional neurological disorders. These people can do very well and get back into living. We expect that is the case with long Covid as well. It just takes time and multidisciplinary engagement, including physiotherapy, graded psychological support, psychiatric support, sometimes, and other specialty services in an integrated care setting. That plan is currently being implemented and we have also put it into the Estimates for this year.