About 14% of participants in a new long-COVID study from Yale said they didn't return to work in the months after their infection, suggesting that the condition results in major economic losses. The study is published in PLOS One.
The study was based on the outcomes of 6,000 participants at eight study sites in Illinois, Connecticut, Washington, Pennsylvania, Texas, and California from 2020 through 2022 as part of the Innovative Support for Patients with SARS-CoV-2 Infections Registry, or INSPIRE study.
A total of 2,939 participants who were employed at the time of their infections filled out surveys about health and work status at recruitment and every 3 months after for 18 months. Included in the survey were questions about returning to work after contracting COVID-19 and the number of workdays missed due to COVID-related symptoms.
The average age was 40 years, 64.1% were women, 69.5% were White, 61.2% were vaccinated against SARS-CoV-2 before the index test, and 3.8% were hospitalized for COVID-19, the authors said. Three months after infection, 1,732 (59.2%) reported no symptoms and 282 (9.6%) reported five or more symptoms.
14% did not return to work
A total of 7.2% of participants missed more than 10 days of work in the 3 months following SARS-CoV-2 infection due to COVID-19 symptoms, and 13.9% did not return to work within that timeframe.
The authors found that having five or more long-COVID symptoms 3 months after infection was the factor most related to missing work. At 3 months, participants with five or more symptoms had a higher adjusted odds ratio of missing 10 or more workdays (2.96; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.81 to 4.83) and not returning to work (2.44; 95% CI, 1.58 to 3.76) than those with no symptoms.
"This number was important because we’ve shown in previous studies that the number of symptoms someone has after being infected with SARS-CoV-2 may be more indicative of how severe their long COVID is," said lead author Arjun Venkatesh, MD, chair of the department of emergency medicine at Yale School of Medicine, in a press release.
We found that having five or more symptoms three months after infection was strongly associated with not returning to work
"We found that having five or more symptoms three months after infection was strongly associated with not returning to work," Venkatesh said. "And when we compare the rates observed in this study to the national population, it could mean as many as 2 million people may be out of work because of post-COVID conditions."
