More Government support and training for Long Covid needed, says expert

Vivienne Clarke

There is not enough Government support for Long Covid treatment, infectious diseases expert Professor Jack Lambert has said.

There needs to be more training for GPs, more clinics and proper guidelines, he told RTÉ radio’s Morning Ireland, speaking in advance of the Oireachtas Health Committee on Health.

The committee will hear from representatives of Long Covid Advocacy Ireland (LCAI) on Wednesday, who will say that patients with Long Covid have been “neglected and dismissed”, calling for an urgent response plan.

Prof Lambert dismissed a suggestion that Long Covid was difficult to diagnose, explaining it is a clinical diagnosis based on the symptoms in people who were exhausted, had pains all over, had trouble concentrating, were anxious and were experiencing fever and sweats.

He said these people had previously not been ill, but contracted Covid, and three months later were sick.

“These were people who had never been sick before,” he added.

Prof Lambert, who runs a private Long Covid Clinic, said he was seeing five new patients every week, some of whom had been infected with Covid just three to four months ago, contracting the new strains of the virus.

Some patients had been infected with Covid two years ago, but they were not improving, he added.

“People say, ‘oh, there's nothing you could do, we don't know anything about it, it's still evolving’. It's not.

“There's huge science out there, and we actually do have statistics on how many patients are infected. So there are things you can do, and there's lots of science out there in pathogenesis, the challenges.

“There are not a lot of treatments that have been carefully studied, placebo-controlled trials, and that's going to take years and years and years, but there are things you can do,” Prof Lambert said.

“We piloted a study on a medication called low dose naltrexone three years ago. LDN helps with brain inflammation, which is one of the problems of Long Covid and helps with repairing the immune system, which is also the problem.

“There are other interventions that they recommend for sleep disturbances, melatonin, so there are things that you can do.

“Unfortunately, none of those things are being given in most of the clinics in Ireland, and none of them are being supported by the Government in terms of reimbursement, so it's a difficult position for patients to be in trying to get support, trying to get treatment, if the places they are going don't have an understanding or a recognition or any plans to treat Long Covid,” he added.

On what needs to be done to address the issue, Prof Lambert said GPs need to be trained regarding Long Covid.

“We urgently need to act,” he said, adding: “Hopefully something will come out of today's [Oireachtas committee] meeting.

“We urgently need to start supporting these patients, who have been sick now for years and years and want to go back to work, want to get healthy.”