Now, like tens of thousands of other healthcare workers, we have a chronic illness and disability – long-term Covid – as a result of an infection acquired in the workplace. It now appears that workers who risked their lives to provide essential medical care face not only chronic illness and organ damage, but also potentially financial impoverishment. It is morally unjustifiable that health workers in this position are being abandoned now. Long Covid is a debilitating, chronic physical illness affecting multiple organs that occurs in people after infection with Sars-CoV-2. It presents with a myriad of potential complications, including damage to the heart, lungs, or brain. nervous system disorders; blood clots? impaired memory; and disabling fatigue levels. The number of people living with prolonged Covid in the UK is now estimated at around 2 million. The rate of Covid-19 caused by workplace exposure is around four times higher in health and social care workers compared to workers in all sectors. In addition, health and social care workers are seven times more likely to have severe Covid-19 than other workers. At least 199,000 NHS workers are currently living with long-term Covid. This is in addition to more than 2,100 health and social care workers who have died due to Covid-19. This degree of workplace-acquired long-term Covid demonstrates failures in personal protective equipment (PPE) policy to adequately protect staff. Much of this viral exposure occurred in the context of inadequate PPE or, in some cases, no PPE at all. Furthermore, there is, so far, no disease-modifying treatment or medical treatment available for long-term Covid. Despite taking this disease on the NHS, we are left without adequate NHS care. They let us languish and just tell us to “wait and see”. Well, while we wait in the hope of a spontaneous recovery, many health workers, who are not actually employed by the NHS, have already lost their jobs. We have heard reports of colleagues in this situation – including primary care and local staff – losing their homes and having to file for bankruptcy. Other healthcare workers, those in direct long-term employment in the NHS, have had better employment protection – until now. Across the UK, Covid absence policies have recently been updated, meaning NHS workers suffering from chronic Covid are now vulnerable to absence disciplinary proceedings and loss of job, career and income. Although UK nations differ on the specific details of these policy changes, it is clear that ‘special Covid leave’ is to end immediately for UK NHS workers with a chronic Covid-related illness. In other words, financial support for NHS staff who are unwell with long-term Covid will end and staff currently absent with long-term Covid will soon face formal absence procedures. This substitution of “special leave” for normal sick leave procedures has the potential to quickly escalate into dismissal. We are already hearing stories of colleagues whose employers are preparing disciplinary proceedings. The NHS is already in the midst of a staffing crisis. Figures show the number of unfilled posts in the health services in England recently rose to 110,192, including a shortage of 39,652 nurses and 8,158 doctors. It is therefore short-sighted to stop supporting NHS workers who are unwell with long-term Covid. Losing these workers from the profession will be a huge brain drain and loss for the NHS. We are a skilled workforce and not easily replaced. We welcome the recent statement from the British Medical Association (BMA), which condemns the change in employment policy for NHS workers with long Covid as “totally unacceptable”. But words are not enough. We have to wonder how things were allowed to get to this point. The BMA must step up and prevent the huge damage that will be done to individuals, our profession and the NHS through the redundancy and loss of careers of doctors and other health workers with long Covid. Together with a group of over 200 other doctors, we have written an open letter to the BMA, calling on them to take effective action. We need the team to better advocate for its members who now face the threat of being fired and losing careers and future earnings. We strongly hope that the BMA can fulfill its role as our advocacy group to influence, change the tide of government policy and ensure continued support for doctors and other health workers with long Covid, as has been the case in other European countries. Meanwhile, as tens of thousands of us NHS workers face this precarious and terrifying situation, we can’t help but feel that we’ve been treated like we’re expendable and are now being abandoned. Somehow the faint memory of people clapping and banging pots and pans on Thursday nights doesn’t quite make up for it.
