Health Check

Most people with COVID-19 make a full recovery within 12 weeks, but some patients have experienced ongoing symptoms for much longer. This has become known as ‘long COVID’. However, new research suggests that the rates of ongoing symptoms and functional impairment after COVID are indistinguishable from other post-viral illnesses, and that long COVID may have appeared to be a distinct and severe illness because of high volumes of COVID-19 cases during the pandemic. Presenter Claudia Hammond is joined in the studio by BBC Health reporter Philippa Roxby to discuss the findings. If long COVID is not unique, could this new spotlight encourage research that would help sufferers of other post-viral conditions? The use of heart pacemakers have become a standard procedure in many countries. Pacemakers are small electrical devices implanted in the chest that send electrical pulses to the heart to keep it beating regularly and not too slowly. The devices can be lifesaving for some people. But devices can malfunction, th