‘Sometimes I don’t recognise my own family’: life with face blindness

Can long Covid make it harder to identify acquaintances, friends, even close relatives? Scientists are investigating a possible link

The other day a man waved at Stanley Chow, and went over to him. “I said: ‘Have we met before?’ Which is kind of the last thing you want to say.” It happens a lot – he finds it hard to remember new people’s faces. “Anyone I’ve spoken to once or twice I do forget quite instantly,” he says. “If I meet someone new, I’ll make a point of following them on Instagram or Facebook so their face becomes ingrained in my memory somehow.”

Around six months ago, a friend phoned Chow to complain he had “blanked” a mutual friend, but the 48-year-old illustrator just hadn’t recognised him. “That unsettled me for a few weeks.” Now, he says, “I always make an excuse, like: ‘Since Covid I can’t remember faces as well as I could.’” He’s not plucking that idea out of thin air. He says he has always had a small degree of face blindness – where people have difficulty recognising or remembering faces – but he believes the Covid infection he got in early 2021 made it worse.