Long Covid more than twice as likely in people from UK’s most deprived areas
ExclusiveMajor study led by Oxford University puts a figure on the degree of long Covid inequality experienced by the most and least deprived members of the UK population
People in the most socioeconomically deprived fifth of the UK population are more than twice as likely to develop long Covid as those in the top fifth, according to a new study.
Some 3.2 per cent of the most deprived 20 per cent developed the condition, compared to 1.54 per cent in the highest fifth, according to research led by Oxford University, based on figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS).
The researchers put the disparity down to the fact that this group were far more likely to have had front line jobs and were less likely to be able to take time out to rest when they became infected or work remotely – with rest playing a key role in preventing an infection developing into long Covid.
Long Covid patients are classified as having the disease for 12 weeks or more. Although vaccines play a key role in reducing infection, scientists believe some positive cases of long Covid may have contracted the virus before the vaccine rollout began in December 2020.
“Basically, the most deprived fifth of the population have twice the prevalence of long Covid than the most affluent,” lead researcher, Professor Trisha Greenhalgh, told i.
“This is probably because they were more likely to get Covid in pre-vaccine days – for example by working in jobs where they couldn’t work from home.”
Professor Greenhalgh added: “They may also have had more medical conditions. Diabetes, for example, is commoner in the more deprived groups. And they were less able to rest during the acute phase.”
The study is published in the Lancet medical journal.
Professor Lawrence Young, a virologist at Warwick University, who was not involved in the research, told i: “The link between many different diseases and social deprivation is well established.
“This is due to a number of factors including increased prevalence of other underlying conditions such as diabetes, lung conditions and heart disease as well as obesity, poor diet and unhealthy living conditions.”
Other factors in the disparity included not having reliable full-time salaries and having caring responsibilities.
The research also confirmed earlier findings that women are more 10 per cent more likely to develop long Covid than men.
Meanwhile, 35 to 65-year-old’s are the age group most likely to get the condition, the study found.
“This age group was more in the front line during the pandemic, contracting Covid before vaccines came along. They are also less likely to rest when they contract Covid as they have pressures of family life,” said Professor Manoj Sivan, of Leeds University, who also worked on the research.
It’s not fully understood why women are more susceptible than men but it is thought to be at least partly related to hormones, which induce different immune responses to the virus.
The relative rates at which different groups of people develop long Covid is based on ONS figures, which are thought to underestimate the true level of the condition but which scientists say nonetheless accurately highlight the disparities within those groups.
The ONS estimates that about 1.1 million people over three-years-old in England and Scotland are living with long Covid. This is just under 2 per cent cent of the population.
These are the figures the estimates for different groups are based upon in the Lancet study.
However, the actual number who have had the condition could be considerably higher, because just over a third of respondents to the ONS survey who had long Covid did not specify when their symptoms started, and so were excluded from those particular calculations.
That amounts to 680,980 people, although how many of them have had symptoms for longer than three months is not possible to say.
But if it was all of them, that would put the total number with long Covid at about 1.8 million – although in reality it is likely to be somewhere between 1.1m and 1.8 million, experts said.
Whatever the true level, scientists warned this week that the number looks set to increase as the summer wave looks set to persist into the autumn.
Covid cases are close to their highest level for more than a year after numbers started rising again at the end of last month, new figures indicate.
And scientists are warning that they are likely to go even higher in late summer and early autumn as people return from the Olympics and the school year resumes.
Researchers from the University of Arizona were also involved in the Lancet study.
Professor Steven Griffin, of Leeds University, who was not involved in the study, added: “The increased risks of long Covid come down to heightened exposure as well as a higher incidence of underlying conditions. Add to this the difficulties people face in accessing healthcare when in this sort of socioeconomic group, and it becomes obvious that they were at heightened risk”.
“So-called ‘key workers’ who were our saviours during the early part of the pandemic, as well as people working on temporary, sometimes ‘zero-hour’ contracts, were consistently those most at risk of exposure to infection, pre-vaccine, often with inadequate respiratory PPE. This group, often lower wage-earners and in public-facing jobs, also suffered from the lack of government financial support to isolate from work along with the poor level of support from statutory sick pay,” he said.
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