Dr. Brian Kent:

When people come to Covid clinics, we do not have a one-size-fits-all treatment that will fix them. I am a lung doctor. When people come to the post-acute clinic in particular, which focuses principally on people with respiratory symptoms, our first job is to find out whether there is something there that their Covid infection has triggered for which there are evidence-based treatments. Dr. Ní Bhriain mentioned asthma, which is one of the conditions we will see being triggered or exacerbated by Covid. We have very good treatments for asthma. We have very good evidence for how to treat that. Similarly, many people will present with difficulties with cognition or difficulties with energy levels during the day. We do know that there are other disorders that can co-exist alongside long Covid where we have good evidence bases for treatment. Dr. Ní Bhriain mentioned a condition called sleep apnoea where people get irregular breathing while they are asleep, which can cause many of those symptoms as well. If we identify that in people who have been referred to the Covid service, we have ways of treating that and potentially improving their symptoms that way. Much of the initial assessment of people coming to the Covid clinic is focused on trying to identify other parallel pathologies and conditions they may have where we do have very clear ways of improving their symptoms.