More than 80 new clinics to assess patients suffering with symptoms of long Covid are to be opened by the NHS by the end of this month.

Speaking at the Health Service Journal’s leadership congress, NHS England chief executive Simon Stevens said that ‘we will have 83 long Covid clinics in place by the end of this month’, marking. Significant expansion on the ’69 clinics identified last year’.

Stevens also revealed that the new clinics will be backed by at least £24 million revenue funding going into this New Year, up from the £10 million announced last year.

The Office for National Statistics estimates that more than a million people could be experiencing long Covid beyond four weeks with 674,000 people saying it was affecting their day to day lives. Almost 200,000 people have said their ability to carry out normal activities has been severely limited by the condition.

Stevens also told the Congress that it was very important that the health service ‘max out the treatment capacity we have’ and to expand elective activity again to make sure that ‘long waits do not become a permanent part of the NHS’.

There is currently a record waiting list of 4.7 million patients in England with more than 300,000 waiting longer than a year for treatment.