Long Covid: Special clinic in Birmingham to explore effects

Felicia Selvaraj is still on oxygen, but doctors hope she can come off it soon

When Felicia Selvaraj became ill with coronavirus in April 2020, she was told she was unlikely to survive.

More than a year on, the nurse from Birmingham is still unwell with long Covid, feeling tired and breathless.

She's now receiving treatment at a specialist clinic in the city which was set up to find out more about the lasting effects of the disease.

Long Covid is thought to affect about one in five people five weeks after an initial infection, ONS figures suggest.

"It's been a very hard year," Ms Selvaraj said. "Covid made me very ill, I've never been ill like this.

"The road to recovery, it's very very long. I'm getting better slowly, every day one more step."

The clinic which is treating her is based at the BMI Hospital in Edgbaston, and was initially run by volunteer doctors who felt there was a gap in the care available.

"We felt we needed this wrap-around service and the only way it would happen was if we did it," Dr Nandan Gautam said.

"If we don't think about the consequences of long Covid we would be setting ourselves up for problems in the future."

• 'It's like someone has piled sandbags on top of me'

• Inside a long Covid clinic: 'I want my life back'

• Latest news and updates from the West Midlands

Also being treated is Rob Smith, a key worker who contracted the virus in January. Four months on, he is exhausted after a short walk.

Rob Smith had to be airlifted to hospital when he became ill with Covid

"Some days I wake up and I'm fine and then some days I wake up and I've got no energy," he said.

There is no universally-agreed definition of long Covid, but it covers a broad range of symptoms.

From his work so far, Dr Gautam said he is "fairly convinced that Covid will have led to some form of auto-immune disease that we don't yet understand".