Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps he is taking to assess the potential impact of new variants of covid-19 on the risks of developing long covid.

The Department uses estimates from the Office for National Statistics to monitor the prevalence of ongoing symptoms following COVID-19 infection which are published on a monthly basis. As the Omicron variant has recently been identified, it is too early to assess of the effect of the new variant on prevalence rates. The impact of the variant, including changes in clinical outcomes, will continue to be monitored.