Long COVID coding in primary care.¶

This OpenSAFELY report is an update of reporting from our peer-review paper published in the British Journal of General Practice on the Clinical coding of long COVID in English primary care: a federated analysis of 58 million patient records in situ using OpenSAFELY.

It is an update of the analysis described in the paper, using data from the TPP/SystmOne electronic health record provider. The data requires careful interpretation and there are a number of caveats. Please read the full detail about our methods and discussion in the paper. These methods have been applied in this update, with code changes limited to those which restrict the report to TPP/SystmOne only. The full analytical methods on this updated report are available on GitHub.

OpenSAFELY is a secure analytics platform for electronic patient records built on behalf of NHS England to deliver urgent academic and operational research during the pandemic. You can read more about OpenSAFELY on our website.

Results¶

Counts and rates of long COVID coding stratified by demographic variable¶

This is equivalent to Table 2 from the paper

Between beginning of January 2020 and the beginning of June 2024 there were 75,530 people in the cohort who have been given a diagnostic code for long COVID.

The rate of long COVID coding over this time period in the cohort was 299.4 per 100,000 people.

		TPP
		Long COVID	Rate per 100,000	%
age_group	0-17	4780	94.7	6.3
	18-24	4230	212.1	5.6
	25-34	9930	285.7	13.1
	35-44	15040	447.3	19.9
	45-54	17960	528.4	23.8
	55-69	17840	401.2	23.6
	70-79	4420	199.8	5.8
	80+	1330	103.6	1.8
sex	F	47860	379.5	63.4
sex	M	27670	219.4	36.6
region	Missing	30	190.0	0.0
	East of England	14920	255.8	19.8
	East Midlands	10500	239.6	13.9
	London	3320	197.0	4.4
	North East	5610	467.4	7.4
	North West	9800	438.5	13.0
	South East	5380	327.9	7.1
	South West	11790	333.5	15.6
	West Midlands	2190	211.6	2.9
	Yorkshire and The Humber	12000	327.7	15.9
imd	1 (most deprived)	12930	258.2	17.1
	2	14080	287.6	18.6
	3	15870	301.9	21.0
	4	16240	329.8	21.5
	5 (least deprived)	14720	323.0	19.5
	Unknown	1680	288.6	2.2
ethnicity	Missing	16970	247.2	22.5
	White	52310	337.6	69.3
	Mixed	770	233.4	1.0
	South Asian	3710	243.3	4.9
	Black	1000	191.4	1.3
	Other	760	155.1	1.0

Volume of code use in individual practices¶

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Use of long COVID codes over time¶

Reporting lag may affect recent dates.

This is distinct from the above table in that it counts all coded events, including where patients have been coded more than once. Record counts are total event counts recorded between the beginning of January 2020 and the beginning of June 2024.

	term	Total records	%
code
1325031000000108	Referral to post-COVID assessment clinic	45,860	37.4
1325021000000106	Signposting to Your COVID Recovery	23,000	18.8
1325161000000102	Post-COVID-19 syndrome	20,960	17.1
1325181000000106	Ongoing symptomatic disease caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2	14,380	11.7
1325041000000104	Referral to Your COVID Recovery rehabilitation platform	10,490	8.6
1325081000000107	Assessment using COVID-19 Yorkshire Rehabilitation Screening tool	1,930	1.6
1325071000000105	COVID-19 Yorkshire Rehabilitation Screening tool	1,550	1.3
1325051000000101	Newcastle post-COVID syndrome Follow-up Screening Questionnaire	280	0.2
1325061000000103	Assessment using Newcastle post-COVID syndrome Follow-up Screening Questionnaire	130	0.1
1325141000000103	Assessment using Post-COVID-19 Functional Status Scale structured interview	40	0.0
1325151000000100	Post-COVID-19 Functional Status Scale structured interview	30	0.0
1325091000000109	Post-COVID-19 Functional Status Scale patient self-report	10	0.0
1325101000000101	Assessment using Post-COVID-19 Functional Status Scale patient self-report	10	0.0
1325121000000105	Post-COVID-19 Functional Status Scale patient self-report final scale grade	NaN	NaN
1325131000000107	Post-COVID-19 Functional Status Scale structured interview final scale grade	NaN	NaN

Characteristics of the cohort¶

This is equivalent to Table 1 in the paper

There were 25,149,170 people in the cohort (patients from practices that use TPP software).