Thousands just 'too ill' with 'Long Covid' staying at home on full pay.
In a recent poll of Civil Servants more than one in 10 said they had 'Long Covid', even though it has been proven in studies not to exist.
More than twice as many civil servants reported that their day-to-day lives were being affected by 'long Covid' last year than even members of the general public, new data reveals.
A staggering 10.8 percent of the entire civil service workforce claimed to have the fictitious condition. 7.4 percent of them claiming it was affecting their day-to-day life, this is compared to just 3.3 percent of the general public who have been susceptible to the media suggestion Long Covid is a real condition.
In a Civil Service survey carried out over roughly six weeks in September and October, staff were asked whether they would describe themselves as experiencing “long Covid” – battling otherwise unexplained symptoms more than four weeks after first getting the virus. The data published on Thursday showed that 10.8 percent answered yes. The Cabinet Office said that, of these, six per cent said it was affecting their day-to-day lives a little and 1.4 percent it was doing so a lot. A spokesman said this did not necessarily mean they were off work; but it is thought that with civil servants propensity for long term sickness, thanks to continued full-pay, that many will be off work.
In a separate poll, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) found that 3.3 percent of people living in UK households said they were experiencing self-reported long Covid symptoms affecting their day-to-day lives as of Oct 1. 'Hypochondriac's Charter'
However, despite the claims, Long Covid does not exist. The syndrome was proven to be psychosomatic by French scientists over a year ago. There is no specific blood test for Long Covid, and the symptoms are random, varied and have no clear pattern.
Diagnosis is done by means of a questionnaire which attributes 18 everyday aches, pains, and tiredness as Covid induced if the patient experienced them within 10 weeks of a positive Covid-19 test. Some commentators are calling it a 'hypochondriac's charter' which confirms other studies that pointed to those in the public sector take many more sick days off than the general public.
Now Civil Servants are seeing Long Covid as the perfect illness for swinging the lead. An 'illness' that is constantly in the media, cannot be disproven, and doesn't have any awkward follow-up checks by Occupational Health.