“Nearly 1 in 7 working-age US adults had experienced long Covid by late 2023, and socially disadvantaged adults were over 150% more likely to have persistent symptoms, two new studies find,” Mary van Beusekom writes over at CIDRAP. “Yesterday in Communications Medicine, Daniel Kim, MD, DrPH, of Northeastern University, analyzed data from the US Census Bureau’s Household Pulse Survey from September and November 2022 and August to October 2023 on more than 375,000 U.S. adults, including nearly 50,000 with self-reported long Covid. Kim assessed sociodemographic and socioeconomic factors as predictors of long Covid; estimated the risk of unemployment, financial difficulties, and anxiety and depression among working-age adults (ages 18 to 64 years) and those currently experiencing lingering symptoms; and tallied the economic effects of the resulting lost wages. ‘In the United States, concerns have been increasingly raised over the future public health and economic burden of long Covid including disability and declines in labor force participation,’ he wrote. ‘However, only a handful of U.S. studies have explored sociodemographic or socioeconomic characteristics that put people at risk of long Covid or have investigated its economic and mental health sequelae.’ About 35 million adults and 30 million working-age adults, or roughly 1 in 7, said they had experienced long Covid by late 2022 and 2023. Lost wages due to long Covid among working-age survey respondents were estimated at $211 billion in 2022 and $218 billion in 2023.” Mary van Beusekom, “Studies: 1 in 7 US working-age adults report long COVID, with heaviest burden on the poor,” CIDRAP.
