Art critic Gabrielle de la Puente, half of The White Pube, signed a contract with her colleague, Zarina Muhammad, to work together on a book in December 2020. One month later, De la Puente caught Covid, which confined her to bed. A long, convoluted journey of misdiagnosis followed.

It was only after an even worse second dose of Covid, a diagnosis of postural tachycardia syndrome (PoTS), and much bed writing that Poor Artists hit the shelves in April last year to critical acclaim. “Because I was so ill, everything was so slow,” De la Puente recalls. “[The book publishers] were incredibly understanding. But it was up to us to produce it. We needed to change how we did it because I was in bed so much.”

De la Puente is one of many creatives for whom the pandemic can’t be a thing of the past. Not only is long Covid extremely physically draining, often sceptical attitudes towards the disease mean the estimated two million people living with the illness in the UK often feel forgotten, unheard, and isolated.