Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what further steps he will take to ensure long covid clinics can deal effectively with caseloads.

The Department has invested over £50 million in dedicated research to improve the understanding, diagnosis and treatment of the long term effects of COVID-19. The research includes projects focused on service evaluation, such as the LOCOMOTION project which aims to establish a ‘gold standard’ of care which can be shared in England and the rest of the United Kingdom drawing from the experiences of current patients and National Health Service professionals.

Post-COVID-19 assessment services are operated by NHS England and NHS Improvement. In July 2021, NHS England and NHS Improvement confirmed an additional £100 million investment in these services with the total NHS funding in England of £134 million. NHS England and NHS Improvement have developed an assurance process to address the regional variation in access to services in a streamlined process, identifying and providing bespoke support to systems.