Table 4.

Exemplary participant quotes by major theme for symptom experiences, fear of help-seeking and experiences of help-seeking

Major theme	Exemplary participant quotes (participant ID, gender, age (years), nation of residency) (quotes provided in intelligent verbatim)
Symptom experiences	“P: No, apart from the return of the backache … but I think I know why that is, so I haven't done anything about it. Because I know what’s going to help it, so as soon as I can go back to the gym, or decide to go back to the gym and start those classes, it will be fine”. (64021806, female, 64, Wales)
	“P: I noticed I was getting increasingly tired… I had a couple of other symptoms as well, which made me think my Levothyroxine dose was now insufficient”. (63984720, male, 62, Wales)
	“I: Okay and has the pandemic affected or changed how you think about doctors’ visits and appointments at all? P: I would certainly said I’ve been more reluctant, I would have stayed away and just dealt with it, rather than perhaps going to see a doctor at an early stage”. (64948240, female, 46, Wales)
	“P:… over the weekend I had a, second time in my life, a bad migraine, and thankfully I'm feeling better but I had thought to myself at what point am I going to go to the GP about not feeling better. And will I… you know am I less likely to go because they're under strain? And I probably am a bit less likely to go, delay it a little bit longer”. (64078317, female, 46, England)
	“P: … it’s certainly changed my mind because like I say I'm of the mindset that says if it’s not sort of life threatening critical then, you know, it can wait. So yes, you know I had a certainly different mentality and part of that I think is because of the strain that was put on the health service and all those within it initially that you perhaps didn't want to disturb them”. (65205685, female, 63, Wales)
Fear of help-seeking	“P: … I haven’t been there, the last time I went there, I think it was in the January when I had my annual COPD and CHD review… So, I hadn’t been there since, and then I was reading all these horror stories, you know, the stuff we were seeing on the telly. You know the people were going into places, and they didn’t even know they had the virus, they wasn’t showing symptoms… And passing it on and I was thinking, this could happen to me in the doctor’s surgery, but when I actually went to the surgery the whole layout had changed, it had all new furniture put in there, so it could be wiped down”. (65205685, female, 63, Wales)
	“P: Well if you're asking about hospital, I was supposed to go to hospital in lockdown see, but the thing is, I was too frightened because of Covid, I thought I'm not going to hospital. And I needed stitches in my knee, because I fell and I landed on both knees in the living room, I fell over the mat. I sliced my knee open, and I needed stitches bad, but I didn't go. My husband used butterfly stitches and done it that way. But I wouldn’t go because of Covid see, because I was too frightened, because I didn't want to get Covid”. (64018114, female, 44, Wales)
	“P: … I mean my view to hospitals, prior to being in one myself, was that, you know there were people dying all over the place in every ward, every corridor with coronavirus. So yes, I would have been, as I say, certainly very cautious to have, to have wanted to put myself in that situation…. you know I was so impressed with how the hospital were operating when I was in there and, as I say if I'd had vision or understood what it was looking like, how it was working I probably wouldn't have had any concerns at all. I think the hospitals were the safest, safest place to be, is my view after the event, seeing how fantastically well the staff were, you know at following procedure etc… So yes if, you know, if you get that message across that, that a hospital, as I say, is probably the safest place than bloody Tesco’s or the local pub or whatever. You know, you're very safe there”. (65205685, female, 63, Wales)
Experiences of help-seeking	“P: … the surgery did a triage thing, the doctor called me and asked me to go and see them and that worked okay, you know, under the restrictions of the local GP, surgery, you know… They have, they’ve got, quite stringent processes… Yeah, I was content there, no serious misgivings, you accept their protocols and the new way of doing things and that was fine actually, no problem”. (64026131, male, 62, Wales)
	“P: Like I said that assumption a lot of people make as well… They assume that because you’re okay, you’re seeing them in real life, you’re okay talking to them over the video, like I said I, I really don’t feel comfortable using those video things. I can’t sort of speak normally over them. I feel very disconnected from the person I just, I find it really hard to do”. (64027453, male, 38, Wales)
	“P: It has changed the whole system, you can’t just make an appointment to go and see somebody, you have to go online, type in briefly what your problem is and then decide whether they call you back or whether they tell you what to do or whether they say I think we should meet face to face. Usually a telephone conversation first and then decide okay perhaps you’d better come down and see me. Which I did once… I think the system works very well actually. I: Do you, so how does it compare then before the pandemic? Could you just make an appointment in those? P: You could but it was always sort of three or four weeks ahead… With the new system, you seem to get some response within the next twenty-four hours which is a big improvement”. (63986310, male, 76, Wales)

I, interviewer; P, participant.