Parkinson attends a long Covid clinic in Bradford where he has received advice about how to manage his symptoms but he is frustrated that there is no cure.
“I have massive deterioration and then a tiny bit of improvement. I’m not really getting any better,” he says.
“They can’t give me some tablets or send me for an operation or whatever that might make it better. They haven’t got the tools to be able to do that.
“What they’ve offered has been helpful but I’m still here five years on and I’m still struggling.”
He believes the government should provide more funding for research into long Covid.
“We’re six years after the pandemic started and there’s still not the investment in the research to fund the treatments we need and that’s one thing that has to absolutely change.
“Of course people are still getting ill. Covid is still here, it’s not completely disappeared,” he says.
“We just forgot this massive national crisis happened and then you’ve got millions of people who’ve been left with this dreadful disease completely forgotten about and it’s staggering to me that this is a situation we’re in.
“We’ve been completely abandoned and forgotten about and that needs to change.”
A government spokesperson said it funded research on health and social care through the National Institute for Health and Care Research and had awarded grants for a clinical trial to test multiple interventions for the treatment of long Covid.
A spokesperson said: “We recognise the very real impact long Covid continues to have on people like Darren and on other families.
“Long Covid services, commissioned by local NHS organisations, should be offered to support people, and we are funding research into this condition to improve diagnosis, support and unlock new treatments.”