Long Covid Is Keeping Significant Numbers of People Out of Work, Study Finds
An analysis of workers’ compensation claims in New York found that 71 percent of claimants with long Covid needed continuing medical treatment or were unable to work for six months or more.
An analysis of workers’ compensation claims in New York found that 71 percent of claimants with long Covid needed continuing medical treatment or were unable to work for six months or more.
A long Covid patient entering a hospital in Sacramento in 2021. The Government Accountability Office estimates that the illness has affected 7.7 million to 23 million people in the United States.Credit...Jim Wilson/The New York Times
By Pam Belluck
Jan. 24, 2023
Long Covid is having a significant effect on America’s work force, preventing substantial numbers of people from going back to work while others continue needing medical care long after returning to their jobs, according to a new analysis of workers’ compensation claims in New York State.
The study, published Tuesday by New York’s largest workers’ compensation insurer, found that during the first two years of the pandemic, about 71 percent of people the fund classified as experiencing long Covid either required continuing medical treatment or were unable to work for six months or more. More than a year after contracting the coronavirus, 18 percent of long Covid patients had still not returned to work, more than three-fourths of them younger than 60, the analysis found.
“Long Covid has harmed the work force,” said the report, by the New York State Insurance Fund, a state agency financed by employer-paid premiums. The findings, it added, “highlight long Covid as an underappreciated yet important reason for the many unfilled jobs and declining labor participation rate in the economy, and they presage a possible reduction in productivity as employers feel the strains of an increasingly sick work force.”
The report, which analyzed Covid-related claims from patients exposed to the virus at work, filed between Jan. 1, 2020, and March 31, 2022, and paid by the agency, provides a snapshot of the problem. The agency, one of the 10 largest workers’ compensation insurers in the country, found that nearly a third of 3,139 Covid-related claims it paid met its definition of long Covid.
Patients received coverage from the fund if they had a positive coronavirus test and the agency or a workers’ compensation board determined that they had a high risk of having been exposed to the virus while at work, typically in environments like hospitals, grocery stores or transit systems. The report classified a case as long Covid if, after infection, a patient required medical treatment for 60 days or more or lost 60 or more days of work.
“It’s a pretty conservative estimate,” said Gaurav Vasisht, executive director and chief executive officer of the insurance fund. “It’s not capturing people who may have gone back to work and didn’t seek medical attention and may still be suffering, so you know, they’re just toughing it out.”
During the time frame of the report, claims for the 977 people the fund designated as having long Covid cost about $17 million out of the approximately $20 million paid to all Covid patients, officials said, adding that the proportion for lost wages was slightly greater than for medical treatment. But Mr. Vasisht cautioned that the dollar amounts provided only a partial picture because it was unclear how long people would need medical care or time off for long Covid.
He added that the cost to patients went beyond money. “The longer you’re out of work, the harder it is for you to get back to work, and that can stigmatize patients,” Mr. Vasisht said. “It could be highly disruptive to their family and professional lives.”
Long Covid is defined by public health authorities as a constellation of symptoms that linger after the initial infection or that emerge weeks later and can include breathing problems, fatigue and brain fog. The Government Accountability Office estimated that long Covid has affected 7.7 million to 23 million people in the United States.
A long Covid patient returned to part-time work after being diagnosed in 2021.Credit...Alex Wroblewski for The New York Times
Katie Bach, a nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution who was not involved in the report, said the study showed that “we have a group of people who got long Covid and at least up until now have been unable to get back to work, and it is a nontrivial number of people.”
She said the report reflects only a slice of the work force: employees with workplace exposure to the virus who are knowledgeable enough about workers’ compensation to file claims. It might include employees who are younger or sicker than the overall working population, while also missing other workers with long Covid, said Ms. Bach, whose own research suggests that about 500,000 people in the United States are currently not working because of long Covid.
The New York report also found some optimistic signals. Since the pandemic’s first wave in early 2020, long Covid cases decreased as a percentage of workers’ compensations claims and of Covid-related claims. The decrease coincided with the advent of vaccines, which studies suggest reduce the risk of long Covid, and with new coronavirus treatments, supporting the idea that if people can avoid becoming severely ill from their initial infection, they are less likely to experience long-term symptoms.
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