Why is Britain now the capital of long Covid?
In May 2020, Simone Benatti helped set up what may well have been the worlds first long Covid clinic. The city of Bergamo, in Lombardy, had been ground zero for the first wave of the pandemic in Europe. Pictures of swamped Italian hospitals shocked the world. And, sure enough, within a couple of months doctors and researchers realised that for many patients, surviving Covid-19 was just the beginning. Patients started returning with all manner of now-familiar ailments, from organ damage to less explicable symptoms such as chronic fatigue, breathlessness and brain fog. The Bergamo long Covid initiative ran from May to December 2020. Then it stopped. In truth we didnt have so many numbers, said Benatti, who is an infectious disease consultant. Theres no doubt