The report warns: “If the COVID population persists by only 10% per year, in 10 years the annual lost wage costs will be half a trillion dollars.”
found that 22 percent of people with persistent COVID were unable to work due to ill health, and another 45 percent had to reduce their working hours.
“Since this report focuses on working-age Americans, we’ll use that group’s labor force participation rate of 75%. So that’s out of 16.3 million Americans of age. long-term COVID workers, we can assume 12.2 million have entered the workforce.” The results show that.
Advertisement
Using the median U.S. wage of $1,106 per week, an estimated 3 million job losses due to prolonged COVID equate to $168 billion in lost income each year.
“This is nearly 1% of the gross domestic product of the United States. If the number of people actually out of work is close to 4 million people, that’s a cost of $230 billion,” the report mentions. .
Harvard University economist David Cutler found that 12-17% of Covid-19 patients still experience three or more symptoms 12 weeks after onset, and the workforce decline among those with a significant reduction of 70%.
Using the number of Covid-19 cases and the labor force participation rate, Cutler estimates that 3.5 million people are out of work due to prolonged Covid, with a 5-year lost wage cost of 1 thousand. billion dollars, or about 200 billion dollars per year.
“Importantly, this number does not represent the full economic burden of prolonged COVID, because it does not include impacts such as lower productivity among sick workers, the cost of substantial health care to which patients suffer or the lost productivity of caregivers,” said. report.
Cutler estimates that prolonged COVID-related medical care and quality of life cost an additional $544 billion per year.
A recent study found that the vaccine reduces the risk of long-term COVID by just 15%.
“While we do not yet know the long-term risk of COVID infection after repeated infection, a recent study suggests that each repeat infection increases the probability of health consequences,” the report said. Castle”.
There are at least five key government interventions that can reduce the economic burden of long-term COVID: better prevention and treatment options, extended paid sick leave, improved conditions at workplaces, broader access to disability insurance, and increased data collection on the economic impact of long COVID.
Source: IANS
