STORM TRACKER: Follow 'Storm Amy' as it bears down on Ireland amid brutal forecast
Search
06 Sept 2025
Search
06 Sept 2025
Please allow ads as they help fund our trusted local news content.
Kindly add us to your ad blocker whitelist.
If you want further access to Ireland's best local journalism, consider contributing and/or subscribing to our free daily Newsletter .
Support our mission and join our community now.
To continue reading this article, you can subscribe for as little as €0.50 per week which will also give you access to all of our premium content and archived articles!
Alternatively, you can pay €0.50 per article, capped at €1 per day.
Thank you for supporting Ireland's best local journalism!
Campaigners have demanded “urgent action” to help long Covid sufferers, as the number of Scots who have had symptoms of the virus for a year or more rose to 59,000.
The charity Chest Heart & Stroke Scotland said the record numbers affected show “more urgency” is needed.
New figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) show an estimated 1.7 million people across the UK still had Covid symptoms more than four weeks after they first suspected coronavirus.
This included 132,000 people in Scotland.
An estimated 1.7 million people living in private households in the UK (2.7% of the population) were experiencing self-reported long COVID as of 5 March 2022 https://t.co/glXxQn7nMj pic.twitter.com/FwHsWtvN5f
— Office for National Statistics (ONS) (@ONS) April 7, 2022
Dr Amy Small, a GP who has been living with long Covid since April 2020, said the record numbers affected by the condition include “real people like me whose lives have been completely turned upside down by long Covid”.
She said: “Every week at work, I’m seeing new cases of long Covid. This isn’t going away, thousands of people are in desperate need of help.
“People in Scotland are still having to push to get the care and support they need and that’s not right.”
She said the support provided by charities such as Chest Heart & Stroke Scotland needs to be “joined-up with NHS” care, “making it easier for GPs to refer patients on to the right care”.
Her message was echoed by Allan Cowie, the director of service delivery at Chest Heart and Stroke Scotland, who said: “The Scottish Government needs to approach long Covid with more urgency.
“How many more records need to be broken before we see urgent action?
“We know that good work is being done in different parts of the country to support people with the condition. But we’re not seeing the speed and urgency to join things up and make sure everyone is getting the help they desperately need now.
“We can’t keep delaying – more needs to be done.
“We need to make sure there is a wraparound service in place where people can easily be referred through to third sector services like ours from the NHS.
“By having this in place we can make sure patients aren’t falling through the cracks.”
Chest Heart & Stroke Scotland has a long Covid advice line which can be contacted on 0808 801 0899 or by emailing adviceline@chss.org.uk.
Subscribe or register today to discover more from DonegalLive.ie
Buy the e-paper of the Donegal Democrat, Donegal People's Press, Donegal Post and Inish Times here for instant access to Donegal's premier news titles.
Keep up with the latest news from Donegal with our daily newsletter featuring the most important stories of the day delivered to your inbox every evening at 5pm.
This publication supports the work of the Press Council of Ireland and Office of the Press Ombudsman, and our staff operate within the Code of Practice of the Press Council. You can obtain a copy of the Code, or contact the Council, at www.presscouncil.ie, Lo-call 1800 208 080 or email: info@presscouncil.ie.
