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Long Covid: School sickness policies need updating

Whole-school issues Senior leadership Staff wellbeing
With thousands of teachers reporting symptoms of long-Covid, schools’ sickness policies need to better recognise the often debilitating impact of this little understood phenomenon, the NASUWT has said.

Figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS, 2021) show that long Covid has hit both healthcare and education professionals the hardest.

Over a four-week period up until March 6, 2021, the ONS reports that 114,000 teaching and education professionals and 122,000 healthcare workers have reported long Covid.

Long Covid is when people who have contracted Covid-19 continue to have a number of lingering symptoms for weeks or even months after they begin to recover. Its medical name is post-acute sequelae SARS-CoV-2 infection (PASC).

Symptoms range from mild to incapacitating and all age ranges are affected. Some estimates show that one in 10 people with Covid will get some form of long Covid.

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