I think it's important to be careful with that claim. Firstly, plenty of this is related to increases in NHS waiting times and decreases in quality of care (whi

I think it's important to be careful with that claim. Firstly, plenty of this is related to increases in NHS waiting times and decreases in quality of care (which could fairly be said to be "due to covid") which mean people are off work for longer than they would otherwise be for conditions that are not directly related to having had a covid infection. Secondly, there are a many other factors that could affect this - the "cost of living crisis" could mean that people feel more pressure to work despite ill health (although this would pull the numbers in the other direction). Also, if I use the working age population(ages 16-64) of 42.1 million in 2021 as a denominator, and remove an increase of 40,000 that the article says should be expected from changing demographics, I get 0.422/42.1 = 1.0%