1. Main points
An estimated 962,000 people living in private households in the UK (1.5% of the population) were experiencing self-reported "long COVID" (symptoms persisting for more than four weeks after the first suspected coronavirus (COVID-19) infection that were not explained by something else), as of 6 June 2021; this is down slightly from 1.021 million (1.6%) at 2 May 2021.
The estimates presented in this analysis relate to self-reported long COVID, as experienced by study participants who responded to a representative survey, rather than clinically diagnosed ongoing symptomatic COVID-19 or post-COVID-19 syndrome in the full population.
Of people with self-reported long COVID, 856,000 (89.0%) first had (or suspected they had) COVID-19 at least 12 weeks previously, and 385,000 (40.0%) first had (or suspected they had) COVID-19 at least one year previously.
Symptoms adversely affected the day-to-day activities of 634,000 people (65.9% of those with self-reported long COVID), with 178,000 (18.5%) reporting that their ability to undertake their day-to-day activities had been "limited a lot".
Fatigue was the most common symptom reported as part of individuals' experience of long COVID (535,000 people), followed by shortness of breath (397,000), muscle ache (309,000), and difficulty concentrating (295,000).
As a proportion of the UK population, prevalence of self-reported long COVID was greatest in people aged 35 to 69 years, females, people living in the most deprived areas, those working in health or social care, and those with another activity-limiting health condition or disability.
If you are worried about new or ongoing symptoms four or more weeks after having COVID-19, there are resources available to help: see the NHS webpage on the long-term effects of coronavirus and the Your COVID Recovery website, which can help you to understand what has happened and what you might expect as part of your recovery. The time it takes to recover from COVID-19 is different for everyone, and the length of your recovery is not necessarily related to the severity of your initial illness or whether you were in hospital.
This is analysis of new, recently collected data, and our understanding of it and its quality will improve over time. Long COVID is an emerging phenomenon that is not yet fully understood. The estimates presented in this release are experimental; these are series of statistics that are in the testing phase and not yet fully developed.
3. Measuring the data
This analysis was based on 313,216 responses to the Coronavirus (COVID-19) Infection Survey (CIS) collected over the four-week period ending 6 June 2021. The CIS covers people aged two years or over living in private households in the UK. Self-reported long COVID was defined as symptoms persisting for more than four weeks after the first suspected coronavirus (COVID-19) infection that were not explained by something else. Parents and carers answered survey questions on behalf of children aged under 12 years.
The strengths and limitations of this analysis are described in our previous release. The survey questions relating to self-reported long COVID can be found in Section D of the CIS questionnaire (PDF, 494KB). See Tables 2a to 2f of the technical datasets accompanying the latest CIS statistical bulletin for survey response rates.
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