Long Covid expert backs dedicated care clinics over seeing GPs

The nation’s leading expert in Long Covid care has urged the federal government to back dedicated treatment clinics and abandon plans to shift the burden of patient care to GPs.

Professor Steven Faux in the St Vincent’s Hospital Long Covid clinic in Sydney. Picture: Ryan Osland

The nation’s leading expert in Long Covid care has urged the federal government to back dedicated treatment clinics and abandon plans to shift the burden of patient care to GPs.

The government is leaving those suffering the debilitating effects of Long Covid – thought to be as many as 10,000 cases a month – to GPs and online support, in defiance of a federal ­parliamentary committee’s recommendation that supports funding more Long Covid rehabilitation clinics.

Professor Steven Faux, the co-founder of the Long Covid clinic at St Vincent’s Hospital in Sydney, said the government’s approach was flawed and Long Covid care should be conducted in rehab clinics like his, which takes a holistic approach to treatment.

Professor Faux, the hospital’s director of pain medicine who previously spent 22 years as the director of rehabilitation, has a six- to nine-month waiting list for new patients, he says in an interview for The Weekend Australian Magazine.

“The GPs are doing their best but there’s not enough GPs, and it’s very complicated because you’ve got to rule out everything else first,” Professor Faux says.

“In January of this year, 100,000 positive cases were registered in the country. That means, 10,000 people got Long Covid,” Professor Faux said. “And every month there’ll be ­another 10,000.

“There’s lower vigilance with respect to Covid vaccinations and so we expect that people will get it a little bit more. There’s been no decrease in demand at the clinic.”

An RMIT study published last October found the nation had “insufficient Long Covid clinics to meet the demand”.

The Senate committee’s Sick and Tired: Casting A Long Shadow report into Long Covid ­recommended “funding be provided in partnership with state health departments for selected public hospitals to develop multidisciplinary Long Covid clinics linked to nationally consistent referral guidelines for screening patients with challenging Long Covid complications.”

Health Minister Mark Butler has not supported the recommendation, instead stating that those living with the condition would benefit from the ­government’s commitment to “expand general practices”.

Professor Faux’s clinical team at St Vincent’s includes nurses, physiotherapists, a sleep specialist, a neurological rehabilitation expert, and a psychologist. A rehabilitation program is tailored to each patient’s needs.

“If patients are identified early and they … start treatment early, the evidence from overseas is that they recover faster,” Professor Faux said.