Long Covid sufferers - do they have hidden lung damage?

A really interesting assignment this weekend for Channel 4 News; speaking to doctors who believe people who developed Long Covid despite having a mild dose of Coronavirus and never needing hospital, may have hidden lung damage. This might explain why they are still experiencing breathlessness, one, or in some cases, two years after infection, and yet, previous scans and tests they’ve had have all come back clear.

Watch the piece here.

The discovery of potentially microscopic abnormalities in their lungs is thanks to a very clever use of harmless Xenon gas, inhaled while someone’s in an MRI scanner.

The pilot study is being scaled up and if the findings are definitive, this could lead to new treatments for long Covid sufferers. Great news for people like Katrina, whose life is really limited by her breathlessness. As she puts it. something which should come naturally - breathing - has become traumatic. She just can’t trust her breathing any more.

Lost on the line, but now we hear their voices

A few years ago File on 4 producer Emma Forde made a documentary about County Lines, when the crime was little understood and only just starting to be reported by the media.

At the time, teenagers and professionals told her girls were also involved in running, and being exploited by, the cross-country heroin and cocaine sales lines.

But it’s taken time to find young women willing to speak. Largely it was about putting in precautions to keep them safe - we have kept them anonymous. But Danielle and Zoe, in the programme you can find here give voice to their experiences in honest and frightening detail.

And teenager Cara has allowed her mother to relate her terrifying experience being trafficked by a county line boss when she was just 14 years old.

What we learn from Danielle, Zoe and Cara is that girls aren’t spared any of the risks or the violence just because they’re female. But those involved in this dangerous world need support to escape and recover that’s different to boys. And that help is not widely available across the UK.

FAKE IT TILL YOU MAKE IT?

My latest File on 4 is called Breaking into Britain - listen here

Like most original journalism, a big story came from a tip off. A contact of the programme got in touch to tell us about a scam she thought was really unfair - someone she knew was paying a high street firm in Ireland to create and live a fake life for him in Ireland. Why? So that as an 'Irish resident' his wife from Pakistan could join him, and they could return to live together in England under EU law. Under British law, she wouldn't have been able to come.

Clever digging by producer Paul Grant, helped by undercover producers posing as British women with husbands abroad, netted us two high street immigration agents who laid bare the scam, and how much they would charge to arrange things.

Ireland's Garda National Immigration Bureau revealed this is a white collar crime which is incredibly hard to spot, but is making the agents millions and millions of euro.