Persistent symptoms after Covid-19: qualitative study of 114 “long Covid” patients and draft quality principles for services

Approximately 10% of patients with Covid-19 experience symptoms beyond 3-4 weeks. Patients call this "long Covid". We sought to document such patients' lived experience, including accessing and receiving healthcare and ideas for improving services.

We held 55 individual interviews and 8 focus groups (n = 59) with people recruited from UK-based long Covid patient support groups, social media and snowballing. We restricted some focus groups to health professionals since they had already self-organised into online communities. Participants were invited to tell their stories and comment on others' stories. Data were audiotaped, transcribed, anonymised and coded using NVIVO. Analysis incorporated sociological theories of illness, healing, peer support, clinical relationships, access, and service redesign.