Developing and validating a risk prediction model for long COVID-19

Most patients with coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) recover within a few weeks. However, around 10-20% of people continue to have symptoms that last for many weeks or months. These ongoing symptoms can involve different parts of the body, including the heart, lungs, nervous system and they may also result in mental health problems. It is still unclear which patients will develop these long-term problems also sometimes known as "long-COVID". Our team has been involved in developing a calculator for the UK and Scottish Governments to identify people at risk of serious COVID-19 that results in hospital admission or death. We now plan to build on this and develop the world's first calculator to identify who is at greatest risk of developing long-COVID. We will do this by analysing data from a unique COVID19 data platform that we have created, which securely holds information on .4 million people (~99% of the Scottish population). We will work with the Scottish Government and NHS leaders to make this calculator available for routine clinical use, which will offer opportunities for the more focused and efficient targeting of resources to reduce the long-term risk of disability and death from COVID-19.