ADVERTISEMENT

“Could I have a glass of water?” may be a harmless question at most restaurants. Here at Vivamayr, a luxury medical spa near Klagenfurt in Austria, it made other guests turn round in their seats to gawk at the newbie.

The waitress kindly but firmly let me know that unless you need it to take medication, drinks are not allowed with meals during the “Mayr cure”. Why? So as not to dilute the digestive juices.

Calming your digestive system is the basis of “the cure” as the belief is that many health problems originate in the gut. Get it working well again and you’ll see most other systems and processes improve too.

But how a stay here gets your gut in shape varies hugely between guests. This is the central tenet of award-winning Vivamayr’s approach: personalisation.

There is no one size fits all approach for a stay here because every body is different. Everyone has different lifestyles, foods and stressors that throw their system out of balance. Your body is always trying to get back into balance, doctors here told me, and with the right diet, treatments, supplements and exercise we can nudge it back into equilibrium.

A man exercises on a treadmill overlooking Lake Worthersee, Austria VIVAMAYR

Prepare for your stay by deciding what you want to work on

I turned up to my first consultation with my doctor with a shopping list of ailments. While he said it was useful to know all of it, he counselled me to choose one or two things to focus on during my week-long stay.

I have a long-standing chronic condition, which some say is caused or exacerbated by poor gut health, and some hormonal imbalances. So we decided to focus on these.

I would recommend telling your doctor about any and all health problems you have or have had recently. I forgot to mention an eye problem and a treatment I did interrupted its healing, landing me in the local hospital. It wasn’t serious thankfully but it’s still worth mentioning everything.

Back at my first consultation, my doctor performed various tests, some conventional like blood tests and others a bit more out there, like using muscle tests to determine if various supplements made my body stronger or weaker.

I was then “prescribed” my treatments and appointments for the week, as well as some supplements. My treatments ranged from IV drips to osteopathy to cryotherapy to Nordic walking.

Most treatments were new to me but the staff carefully explained what would happen and the likely benefits. Each day was a fun journey of discovery through the world of wellness.

Get ready to learn a lot about your body

My prescribed diet was definitely less than I eat at home but it wasn’t too extreme. It’s worth knowing that if your goal is weight loss then you’re likely to be put on a fasting diet. This sounds extreme but the daily monitoring and testing by doctors reassures you that nothing dangerous is happening to your body. “The cure” is adjusted and fine tuned daily based on how your body is responding to the new diet, treatments, exercise and routine.

Read more about Vivamayr’s recommendations for a gut-friendly diet here.

Many of the practitioners I met around the centre told me that guests find “the cure” to be an emotional rollercoaster and this was definitely my experience. A detox stresses out your body, after all, but ultimately does it good, if done safely and under doctor’s supervision.

I got new information about my body at almost every appointment and while this is empowering, it was overwhelming at times as I am prone to health anxiety. It will take a while for all of the information and advice I was given to sink in, and probably more time to replace old habits with healthy new ones.

What can Vivamayr treat?

People come here looking for help with a huge range of health issues. Some of the most common are post-COVID recovery, immunity and skin issues, allergies, diabetes and weight loss.

With these issues, specialist programmes are in place for you to follow. The programme I was on was tailored to what I was dealing with.

What’s the atmosphere like at Vivamayr?

I would describe the mood as meditative. No one moves quickly or speaks loudly. There’s no background music playing. This is all intentional, of course.

The atmosphere and décor are designed to be calming. It works well when you’re on the emotional rollercoaster of a fast, or if you’ve gone cold turkey on booze or cigarettes as many of my co-guests had.

The staff are friendly and helpful if a little detached. This is comforting, in a way, as they are dealing with so much personal information and you’re sometimes telling them really private details about yourself – overfamiliarity would feel out of place.

There is also a detachment between guests when you’re inside the hotel. I suspect this is partly because many people come here to get away from it all, including small talk with strangers.

If you do want to get to know your fellow guests, the best time to chat is when out on group activities such as hiking.

Is it OK to go to Vivamayr on your own?

Absolutely. There were lots of other guests on their own so I didn’t feel out of place.

There were also couples, mothers and daughters, and pairs of friends. It was the fourth visit for one guest I spoke to. She was here on her own but she said sticking to the diet and rules was “easier” when she came with family.

Depending on your individual schedules, you may not get to spend much time together. But you can sit together at mealtimes, which are of course slow and leisurely affairs.

What is the recommended length of stay at Vivamayr?

This depends, you guessed it, on the individual. If you come here with serious or long standing issues, a longer stay will allow for more time to get you back in balance.

The general advice is “come for as long as you can” with the average length of stay being 10-12 days. Some programmes are recommended for 3 or 4 weeks.

I was recommended to come for a week to really feel the benefits and I felt it was a good length of time.

The first half of the week was a shock to the system, getting used to the reduction in food and feeling the effects of all the treatments. But I got into the swing of things by day 4 and I could happily have stayed in the Vivamayr bubble for longer.

Vivamayr medical health resort near Klagenfurt, Austria VIVAMAYR

What is there to do in your free time?

How much free time you have will depend on the length of your stay.

I had 5 or 6 appointments and treatments a day, except at the weekend when some departments are closed. But if you come for 2 or 3 weeks you’re likely to have less appointments each day, leaving you more free time.

It’s normal for your energy to be low during the first few days of treatment, as you’ll likely be eating less food than usual and your body will be detoxing. So you might not feel like doing much beyond sunbathing on the lake jetties or relaxing in one of the saunas.

Once you’ve got your energy back, there’s plenty to do in the surrounding area. You can borrow a bike and cycle around Lake Worthersee, go walking in the nearby hills, take the ferry across the lake or join one of the group cooking classes or excursions.

How I felt at the end of my Vivamayr stay

My Vivamayr doctor had his work cut out for him. Chronic health problems are notoriously difficult to solve. I’ve tried a long list of remedies and been to many specialists over the last 10 years. Consequently, I knew it was unlikely that a general practice doctor would have the missing piece of the puzzle. But I definitely got some benefits from my stay.

In consultation with the doctor, I paused some medication while at Vivamayr and I didn’t have a flare up in symptoms. Of course it’s impossible to know whether this was due to “the cure” or just because I was very relaxed which is known to help in the way the body processes pain.

There were some surprising benefits. Eating relatively bland food really sharpened my taste buds. Dessert was added to my diet half way through the week and the first few spoonfuls were an explosion of flavour. It just goes to show that we get so used to things like sugar that we practically stop tasting them. So cutting back on it can make it all that much more enjoyable.

The habits that are encouraged at Vivamayr aren’t rocket science. We all know we should eat slowly, stay off screens and get a good night’s sleep.

But it’s much easier to stick to these healthy routines when everyone around you is adhering to them and you have professionals holding you accountable every day.

If you can continue these good habits at home, a stay here could do wonders for your health and happiness.

The writer was a guest of VIVAMAYR.

The Ontario government has big aspirations for two iconic provincial properties in Toronto that have seen better days.

The government’s plan to redevelop Ontario Place into a “world-class, year-round destination” and relocate the Science Centre to the former theme park’s waterfront site were the talk of the town this week.

But despite a big announcement Tuesday where Premier Doug Ford and other members of his government laid out their latest vision, there are still many unanswered questions about the future of the controversial plan.

Here’s what we know, what don’t we know and where things could go from here.

How did we get here?

The province announced in July 2021 it would partner with three private companies to build an indoor water park and spa complex, a revamped concert venue and an “adventure park” as part of its plan to reimagine Ontario Place.

Three companies were selected: Austria’s Therme, which specializes in water parks and spas; Quebec outdoor recreation firm Écorécréo; and Live Nation, which operates the existing music venues on site, Budweiser Stage and Echo Beach.

On Tuesday, Ford, members of his government and company representatives revealed the next stage of that redevelopment plan. The latest vision includes a new home for the Science Centre, an expanded amphitheatre, a public beach, bars, restaurants, a new marina, a pier, and a massive spa.

Under the proposed plan, the current Science Centre building at the corner of Eglinton Avenue East and Don Mills Road in northeast Toronto would eventually be demolished and replaced with housing.

A rendering of the provincial government’s latest vision for the Ontario Place redevelopment. (Government of Ontario)

Why is the province moving the Science Centre?

The Science Centre building was first opened in 1969 and is in need of repairs, according to John Carmichael, chair of the centre’s board of trustees.

Carmichael said a pedestrian bridge between two of the centre’s buildings has been closed for several months awaiting repair, and the building isn’t equipped with wi-fi internet.

One of the front entrances is also currently closed for maintenance, requiring visitors to take a shuttle to the rear entrance to access the exhibits.

“We know it’s expensive. We know that there is a good deal of work required, as you can imagine with any building of this age,” Carmichael said in an interview Wednesday on CBC Radio’s Metro Morning.

WATCH | Ford says current Science Centre site ‘doesn’t cut it’:

Ford on Ontario Place plans: ‘Last time I checked on the sign it doesn’t say Toronto Place’ Premier Doug Ford’s government announced Tuesday it will move the Science Centre to the Ontario Place grounds. In response to critics of the controversial redevelopment process, Ford said leaving the site as is “doesn’t cut it.”

Infrastructure Minister Kinga Surma says a business case that showed it would be more cost-effective to build a new Science Centre at Ontario Place, rather than invest in improvements at its current location.

But when pressed for actual numbers in an interview Wednesday by Metro Morning guest host Jill Dempsey, Surma declined to provide specifics.

“We are verifying all of the numbers,” Surma said. “Before we share that information with the public, we want to triple check all of the information.”

Ontario Infrastructure Minister Kinga Surma says a business case showed it would be more cost-effective for the province to include the Science Centre in the Ontario Place redevelopment, rather than investing in improvements at its current location. The province has yet to provide actual figures. (Heather Waldron/CBC)

Ford said Tuesday the province will work with the city of Toronto to build housing on the Science Centre site, although he couldn’t say how much or what kind of units it would include.

“There’s going to be thousands of units there,” he said.

The Science Centre currently sits on about 36 hectares of largely ravine land that’s owned by the city and Toronto and Region Conservation Authority. It was leased to the province in 1965 for a 99-year term of $1 per year, the city told CBC Toronto.

The city says the terms of the lease only permit the Science Centre to demolish and build new structures for the purpose of operating as a science centre. That means the province would need to renegotiate the lease in order to build anything else, including housing.

What do those living near the Science Centre think?

Ford’s proposal is garnering opposition from some who live in the community near the Science Centre.

Ahmed Hussein, CEO for the Neighborhood Organization, said newcomers, youth and low-income people in the Flemingdon Park and Franklin Park neighbourhoods have all benefited from its proximity.

“We’re really disappointed because this is a gem in our neighbourhood,” Hussein said. “We need attractions in the suburbs. We don’t need to move everything to the downtown.”

Grade 11 student Paromita Roy said without the Science Centre, there isn’t an attraction in the neighbourhood for kids to look forward to. (Haydn Watters/CBC)

Moving the Science Centre downtown will make it more difficult to access for people in Flemingdon Park and Franklin Park because it adds an additional cost, Hussein said.

“We have to understand there are people who are not able to go to downtown,” he said.

Ahmad Alam, a Grade 10 student in the area, didn’t mince words about the decision.

“I was pissed when they said, they’re going to move it. I thought it was pretty stupid,” he told CBC Radio’s Here and Now. “The Science Centre here on Don Mills [Road] is like the only thing we have.”

LISTEN | Kids in Flemingdon Park say they need the Science Centre to stay:

Paromita Roy is in Grade 11 and is the student council president at the nearby Marc Garneau Collegiate Institute.

“I think it would affect the neighborhood a bit because now you don’t have the attraction that kids can look forward to,” she said.

Hussein would like to see more consultation with the community about the Science Centre’s future, as he said there hasn’t been any so far.

“We just heard the news as everybody else,” he said.

What will the new Science Centre look like?

The simple answer is: we don’t know yet.

No detailed design plans have been released, though the province says the Science Centre will find its new home in a “custom-built, state-of-the-art facility,” as well as the Cinesphere and the pods that were part of the original Ontario Place.

A development application currently before the city references “a single storey building … to host science-based programming potentially in partnership with the Ontario Science Centre.”

An image included in that application shows a Science Centre building on the mainland.

The current Science Centre building at the corner of Eglinton Avenue East and Don Mills Road in northeast Toronto. (Haydn Watters/CBC)

The province says additional details will be released “at a later date.”

Ford’s office confirmed to CBC Toronto that the new Science Centre will be around half the size of the previous one.

The current six-storey building is approximately 568,000 square feet, while the new centre will be around 25,000 square metres, with the new building taking up about 18,000 square metres and the pods and Cinesphere taking up 7,100 square metres.

Construction on the new centre will begin in 2025 with its opening expected for 2028, the Science Centre said in a statement this week. The current facility will remain open in the interim.

This image was included in Infrastructure Ontario’s development application for the Ontario Place site, submitted on behalf of the Ontario government. The application is likely to change as plans are developed and the application is updated. (Infrastructure Ontario)

What needs to happen before the construction starts?

The province’s proposal has to make its way through the city’s development application process and ultimately be approved by city councillors.

Infrastructure Ontario submitted a development application on behalf of the Ministry of Infrastructure in November 2022, the centrepiece of which is Therme’s 65,000-square-metre, seven-storey indoor private “wellness centre” and water park.

An artist’s rendering of Austrian company Therme’s plan for a spa and water park on the West Island. (Submitted by Therme Canada)

City staff published a status report in late March with some of their initial feedback on the application. They highlighted that the proposed 22,000-square-metre, 26-metre-high entrance building that would connect the mainland to the West Island (where the spa will be built) is so big that it “overwhelms the public realm.”

Staff also concluded that a five-level underground parking garage would defy established city and provincial planning policy that stresses public transportation over private vehicles.(Ontario Place is one of the terminal stations of the Ontario Line, a 15.6-kilometre subway line that would run from Ontario Place in the west to the current Science Centre in the east).

On Thursday, councillors on the city’s government committee voted to defer a decision on whether to swap land with the province to facilitate the the redevelopment until the city council approves the development application and the province has provided council with a copy of the lease with Therme.

The city says staff continue to engage Infrastructure Ontario about the issues raised in their report and from public consultations.

Underneath the shadow of the snow-topped Austrian Alps, in front of a forest of thick green trees and behind a pure azure lake, sits a sprawling chalet that has seen everyone from Kate Moss to Michael Gove pass through its wide glass doors. The VivaMayr health resort in Altaussee, Austria, has long been the picturesque home of celebrity detoxes – strict bans on caffeine and alcohol, combined with stricter rules about the number of times you need to chew your food (40, naturally) have helped numerous celebrity clientele lose weight. The detoxing might sound harsh, but tranquillity oozes through the resort’s Instagram page, where enchanting mists tickle thick evergreen trees and women pose with mugs in sleek, pine interiors. It’s not the image that comes to mind when you think “long-Covid clinic”, but it is one. For £2,700 a week (excluding accommodation), sufferers can attend VivaMayr’s post-Covid medical programme, which promises a “better quality of life”.

There is currently no cure for long Covid – the condition in which individuals continue to suffer Covid-19 symptoms for months after first being infected – but there are plenty of treatments. There is an entire network of specialist NHS long-Covid clinics across the United Kingdom – here, patients can undergo rehabilitative programmes to help them improve their stamina, breathing and cognitive functions (for many, long Covid is characterised by fatigue, breathlessness, and concentration problems). Yet in September, the Office for National Statistics estimated that 1.1 million people in the UK currently suffer with long Covid, while between July and August, only 5,737 people were referred to specialist NHS clinics. With the Omicron variant threatening more lives, there’s a gap in the market for long-Covid care, and plenty of private practitioners are happy to fill it – for a price.

Gwyneth Paltrow was one of the first. In February 2021, the actor and businesswoman wrote a blogpost on her lifestyle website, Goop, detailing her post-Covid regime, which included fasting and “doing an infrared sauna as often as I can”. Paltrow’s post helpfully listed the numerous products she’d used to get a handle on her “long-tail fatigue and brain fog”: £112 Goopbrand vitamin C serum, a nearly-£400 sauna blanket, and a single £105 drinking glass (purchasable from the Goop site) via which long-Covid sufferers can sip non-alcoholic gin (also helpfully linked). The National Medical Director of NHS England, Stephen Powis, warned against Paltrow’s advice, saying, “Some of the solutions she’s recommending are really not the solutions we’d recommend in the NHS. We need to take long Covid seriously and apply serious science.”

But Paltrow is far from the only person who can be accused of commercialising and commodifying long-Covid treatments. Over the course of the past year, numerous long-Covid wellness retreats have sprung up across the globe, offering treatments for breath-taking prices. In ascending order of eye watering, there’s: the Park Igls Fit After Covid “therapeutic module” in Austria for £3,000 a week; the RAKxa long Covid programme in Thailand at £2,893 for three nights; and the Arrigo Long Covid Healing Programme in Somerset, £2,500 a day (minimum seven-day stay). Then there’s VivaMayr, where patients can exercise in the Alpine air, jump into the icy lake and have frequent massages to help them relieve their symptoms.

View image in fullscreen Breathing space: a patient in a hyperbaric chamber, where she will breathe pure oxygen at high pressures to help oxygenate her tissues and promote healing. Photograph: Getty Images

All four of the above programmes involve qualified medical professionals, diagnostic tests and tailored diets alongside wellness practices, such as yoga, mud baths, “aquagymnastics” and acupuncture. Although there are some unorthodox treatments on offer – Park Igls promises patients “three liver compresses with beeswax”, while RAKxa patients undergo Ya-Pao therapy, in which a paste is applied to their chest and set on fire – these complement traditional medicine. Brendan Delaney is a professor of medicine at Imperial College London who, alongside 30 other doctors, spent six months putting together a set of recommendations for recognising and managing long Covid; it was published in the British Journal of General Practice in November. Delaney personally isn’t too concerned about the types of treatments on offer to patients at long-Covid retreats.

“They’re getting the medical input and then they’re getting the rehab type input via some form of wellness activity,” Delaney says. “If they happen to be able to afford to have that in a trip to the Austrian Alps, well that’s a wonderful place to have your rehab.” The problem, of course, is that the vast majority of long-Covid sufferers can’t afford it.

“The idea that long Covid patients are the Knightsbridge worried-well that can ship off and do these kind of wellness things is completely erroneous. The biggest groups [of sufferers] are healthcare workers and teachers, followed by care home staff, because they’ve had the biggest exposure to Covid early on, and possibly quite large viral loads,” says Delaney, who himself has had long Covid for almost two years. Although most sufferers can’t afford bespoke multi-thousand pound retreats, Delaney says that many do seek private help, be it “packages of online wellness treatment for a few hundred pounds” or hyperbaric oxygen therapy, a treatment where patients breathe pure oxygen at high pressures to help oxygenate their tissues and promote healing.

“If you’re in a situation where you are unable to work, you feel awful, and you can’t carry out your family and your social obligations, then you’re going to try and find any way you can to try and improve the situation you’re in,” Delaney says, noting that it’s “not unusual” for NHS long-Covid clinics to have up to “10-month” waiting lists. According to the most recent NHS England data, more than a third of people referred to post-Covid assessment centres in England have to wait “15+ weeks” to be seen, while in the southwest of England specifically, 49% of patients have to wait this long. In this environment, increasingly desperate patients are willing to spend a fortune on private tests and treatments, as well as vitamins, supplements, IV drips, herbs and alternative medicines that they hope will provide relief.

The issue is exacerbated because many patients can’t even get referred to NHS long-Covid clinics in the first place – often their symptoms are dismissed as anxiety. “The problem that a lot of patients have is not being taken seriously,” Delaney says, “Because the largest group of patients are women… and there’s a long history in medicine of not taking women’s problems seriously.” (A March 2021 paper in the BMJ found that middle-aged women in particular face a “greater risk of debilitating long-term symptoms” after hospital treatment for Covid-19.)

Delaney works one day a week as a GP and has seen this problem first hand. One of his patients was referred to an NHS long-Covid clinic and dismissed as anxious. Delaney brought the patient in and did his own tests, and found that she had tachycardia (a heart rate that was too fast). Delaney was able to prescribe medicine to the woman thanks to his long-Covid expertise, but he knows that many health workers would simply have dismissed her.

Patients who can afford elaborate wellness retreats, then, aren’t just getting treatment for their money – they’re also getting access to someone who takes them seriously. A wealth divide exists in long-Covid treatment, which is exacerbated by the fact that being sick in itself is already expensive, with many left unable to work. In the autumn, a small survey of 252 sufferers conducted by campaign group Long Covid Support found that 45% had been unable to return to work, while 5% had been directly dismissed by their employers because of their condition.

“People with conditions such as chronic fatigue and possibly long-Covid experience substantial disruption to their lives and support from family and friends is often required,” says Paul McCrone, a professor of health economics at the University of Greenwich who has authored papers on the hidden costs of chronic fatigue. While McCrone says there will always be a demand for private medicine, he adds that one-size-fits-all treatments have historically left many chronic fatigue sufferers seeking paid-for alternatives outside of the NHS.

“Effective individualised treatments are needed and this does require large amounts of funding,” McCrone says. “It is essentially a political choice as to how much we spend on healthcare. The line frequently given is that resources are scarce, but that is a relative concept – how scarce are they? We currently spend less than 10% of GDP on health and so there is scope for increases.”

In July, the National Institute for Health Research set aside £19.6m for 15 studies on diagnosing and treating long Covid. Yet while there continues to be no consensus on the best treatments, let alone a cure, retreats will continue to attract customers. Although most of the treatments on offer here are unlikely to be damaging, it is entirely possible that someone could spend £10,000 hoping to be cured and come out the other end feeling no better. Writing in the Telegraph in October, journalist and long-Covid sufferer Helen Kirwan-Taylor argued that, “Cynicism goes out of the window when you’re desperate.” She described feeling “radiant” after one retreat, but overdoing it the next day and being “drained” by the time night fell. “Residential clinics speed up the healing process, but unless you maintain the benefits with the right diet and regular treatments at home, the symptoms come flooding back,” she concluded.

Dr Peter Gartner is the head physician at the Park Igls retreat in Austria. He says its Fit After Covid programme was developed in autumn 2020, by adding “a few treatments and a few diagnostic tools” to the resort’s standard Mayr medicine package, which emphasises the gut’s role in wellbeing. Gartner says Park Igls patients undergo a “chewing bootcamp” where they learn to chew thoroughly and are also treated with detoxes, including the beeswax compress. He adds that Park Iglis’s experts kept up to date with long-Covid research in order to offer the best diagnostic tools as part of the new package, including a spirometry test to measure lung function. He says the retreat sees “a few” long-Covid patients per week.

“There are no side-effects and this is a programme everybody can do,” Gartner says when asked if he’s concerned that because so little is known about long Covid, the treatments on offer could potentially make people feel worse. Gartner says sufferers with “severe problems” should undergo intensive rehab with 24-hour monitoring and see specialists and virologists – he says these specialist medical houses are common in Austria. “Our offer is just: what can we do afterwards?” Gartner says, “It’s just a missing link between the rehabs and normal life.”

Fiona Arrigo, founder of wellness retreat company the Arrigo Programme, says her Somerset-based long-Covid retreat was “created in response to the strong demand of those struggling with the insidious after-effects of Covid-19” – she says staff receive “daily enquiries” from potential patients. Arrigo says the programme gives sufferers time to process the “shock, trauma, exhaustion, depletion” of long Covid and the bespoke treatment plan helps people recuperate. This, she says, is also why the retreat is expensive: “It is this price because of the exceptionally high level of expertise, the access our clients get to the different specialists and the in-depth testing it requires and also because the programme is completely bespoke to the individual.” Kirwan-Taylor described staying at a “charming cottage” filled with “mounds of fresh strawberries” and “personalised bathrooms”, with her own little river outside. “On the first night I had acupuncture on a heated bed covered in flower petals, then a bath with magnesium flakes.”

Arrigo says the retreat’s long-Covid patients have built confidence, developed deeper breathing patterns, improved their energy levels, and found “deeper understanding and self-compassion on this often challenging and difficult journey.” Still, results aren’t guaranteed and she says staff “talk very clearly to everyone” to “ensure clients coming know what we can realistically offer and what they need.” If Arrigo staff feel they can’t help, they recommend other possible clinics that clients can attend.

According to management consulting firm McKinsey, the global wellness market is now worth $1.5tn and it’s constantly growing. Yet while mindfulness and meditation has been shown to help with the stress and anxiety of long Covid, wellness solutions should not replace properly funded medical care.

“There is a neoliberal ideology that expects us to take full individual responsibility for our health and well-being – allowing governments to withdraw and defund public services,” says Ronald Purser, a professor of management at San Francisco State University and author of McMindfulness: How Mindfulness Became the New Capitalist Spirituality. “Like any other hot commodity, mindfulness has been refashioned to accommodate the needs of the market, obfuscating critical reflection on the systemic causes of our collective malaise and institutional stress.” Purser argues: “Fundamental health inequities must be addressed at a government policy level.”

Most of those able to afford luxury long-Covid retreats will see some benefit – rest, relaxation and tailored treatment plans can never be a bad thing. “But none of these things are getting to the root cause of the problem, which is still what we’re trying to find out,” GP Delaney notes, “Is it blood vessel inflammation? Is it an immune problem? Is it a persistent virus? Is it blood clots?” Each new variant, including Omicron, behaves slightly differently and brings new questions. If nothing else, long Covid is the great equaliser – even the richest among us can’t pay their way to the answers.