What politicians are being asked to do about Long Covid
People living with Long Covid are asking New Zealand politicians to collect better information about the condition and to let those affected get disability support. New Health Survey figures show 4.3 percent of adults currently have it — about 185,000 people.
Long Covid is the name for symptoms that last weeks or months after a Covid-19 infection. People can feel exhausted, have brain fog, or struggle with breathing long after the virus itself has cleared.
The call came at an online meeting hosted by Long Covid Support Aotearoa on 10 August 2026. MPs and candidates from Labour, ACT, the Greens, New Zealand First and the Opportunity Party all attended. RNZ
Long Covid Support Aotearoa chair Larissa Hockey ran the session. It gave people with the condition a chance to speak directly to politicians from five parties, weeks before the 2026 election.
Renee Dingwall, a Long Covid advocate who has the condition herself, told the panel that group members had seen doctors who did not believe in or understand Long Covid. The panel heard calls for doctors to know more about it, and for the government to start properly tracking how many people have it.
The New Zealand Health Survey started asking questions about Covid-19 and Long Covid in 2024/25, according to the Ministry of Health. Health NZ The latest results, reported on 10 August, show 4.3 percent of adults currently living with the condition. Earlier figures from April showed 9.2 percent of adults — about 401,000 people — had experienced Long Covid symptoms at some point. RNZ
The difference between those two numbers is the gap between currently having symptoms and having had them at any stage.
The survey also showed that women, Māori and disabled adults were more likely to report having had Long Covid. One in six Māori adults (15.5 percent) reported symptoms, and among disabled New Zealanders the rate was one in four (22.8 percent). RNZ
Freya Sawbridge, the New Zealand delegate to the World Health Organisation for Long Covid and administrator of the NZ Long Covid Group, has been pushing for more recognition since at least 2022, when she described how hard it was to get help from a health system that barely acknowledged the condition. The Spinoff
The parties at the panel had different views on what the government should do. Ingrid Leary, speaking for Labour, said she did not accept the claim that people were taking advantage of the welfare system.
ACT's Todd Stephenson said it was important to make sure taxpayer money on health was well spent. New Zealand First's Andy Foster said doctors needed to understand Long Covid better and funding for medicines should be maintained.
Opportunity Party leader Qiulae Wong said the party's policy of a universal basic income — a regular payment to everyone, funded by a new tax on land — would help support people with Long Covid.
The broader context here is that Long Covid touches on several areas of government policy at once: the health system, welfare payments, who qualifies for disability support, and how data is collected. The Health Survey changes in 2024/25 mean New Zealand now has a starting point for understanding how widespread Long Covid is. But knowing the numbers and actually providing services are two different things. Advocates are saying the data is there to justify acting on it — the question is whether any party will make a clear promise before the election.
The equity side of this matters. If Māori adults are reporting Long Covid at 15.5 percent and disabled adults at 22.8 percent, any government response will need to consider the Māori Health Authority (Te Apepūrongo Matihiko), the disability support system (Whaikaha), and existing health equity work. No party made a firm policy commitment at the panel, but the session did show that Long Covid is on the radar of at least five parties heading into the campaign.
What stood out for political observers was not any single announcement, but the fact that advocates have organised across patient support, doctor awareness, and political engagement — and that Long Covid is now being talked about as a disability access issue, not just a health one.
