The mystery of the possibly hundreds of thousands of missing Long Covid PIP claimants is growing as both the Office for National Statistics and the DWP publish their latest statistics.
Back in November we published an article looking at how tens of thousands are missing out on PIP for Long Covid and exploring some of the possible reasons for this.
The latest figures show that the gap between the number of people who may be eligible for PIP for Long Covid and the number who are actually making a claim has grown even larger.
The new figures from the Office for National Statistics estimate that 506,000 people have now had Long Covid for over a year, up from 426,000 in November.
247,000 say that their ability to undertake their day-to-day activities had been “limited a lot” as a result of Long Covid, up from 233,000 in November.
Yet the latest DWP statistics record just 480 claims in total where Long Covid is the main disabling condition, up from 143 three months earlier.
The success rate has fallen from 76%, but is still high, at almost 60%.
And a quarter of those who were successful got the enhanced rate of both the daily living and the mobility components.
So, it remains the case that PIP claims for Long Covid have a better than average chance of success, but hundreds of thousands of people who could be making a claim are seemingly not doing so.
