'Long COVID' patients struggle to recover from the virus

London cab driver Gary Miller is used to being active. When he wasn't driving his black cab around the streets of London he'd regularly go to the gym and play sport and meet with friends. But these days, just stepping out into the garden is a major achievement.

Since being hospitalised last year with coronavirus, Miller has struggled to recover from the virus. He suffers extreme fatigue, aching muscles and joints, headaches and breathlessness.

Some days are so bad that Miller can hardly get out of bed.

It's affecting me not only physically but mentally as well", said Miller. "There are times that I see a light at the end of the tunnel, I'm taking one step forward and - bang I'm ill again and I take two steps back and I start from scratch."

He is not an isolated case.

One legacy of the pandemic in London is a network of 'Long COVID' clinics where medics, patients - and Britain's overstretched health system - are grappling with the long-term effects of COVID-19.

One of these is at the King George Hospital in the east London district of Ilford where Miller is a patient.

Here medics are working to treat patients and to solve the mystery of this new condition. The hospital serves what has been dubbed the "COVID triangle", three east London boroughs whose infection rates have been among the highest in Britain.

Last summer, respiratory consultant Adam Ainley began noticing that some coronavirus patients who had been discharged from the hospital were not getting better. They had a wide range of symptoms, including fatigue, muscle pain, breathlessness, headaches, anxiety and depression.

Ainley began drawing on the expertise of colleagues to treat what has been labeled "Long COVID" or long-haul COVID. His clinic was one of the first of 83 across England backed by the U.K.'s state-funded National Health Service.

The clinic has seen 700 patients, with another 120 on the waiting list.

Ainley says the goal is to offer a one-stop approach.

"We will try and address all the components of your illness," he said. "When you get to the clinic you'll see myself, you'll see a physiotherapist, the occupational therapist, our clinical psychologist. I have access to other specialty members from cardiology, rheumatology, as I need to, based upon your symptoms."

Psychologist Marc Kingsley said many patients experience memory loss and "brain fog," as well as loneliness, and low moods.

"Your whole life changes from being active, having a very clear role in your life completely changes. The low mood and the trauma symptoms can hit anybody", he said.

Rohit Patel, 62, is one such patient. The 62-year-old supermarket cashier was hit by the virus more than a year ago and spent three months in the King George Hospital, including six weeks in an induced a coma.

He said he felt "like a zombie".

Since being discharged in July he has learned to walk again, with the help of physiotherapists. He still is short of breath and suffers from numbness in his feet but he is hoping to return to work next month.

"They got me off the frame (Zimmer frame), they got me onto the walking stick, and then now I can walk indoors without a walking stick," he says.

He's still not 100% better, but Patel and his family know it could have been so much worse. Doctors say he is lucky to have survived at all.