| |
The Current and Future Burden of Long COVID in the United States
|
| |
| |
15 June 2025
Download the PDF here
These graphs can be used to estimate the burden over multiple years and for various incidence values over time. For example, if symptoms last 2 years, long COVID would cost an average of $5.42 billion (ie, $2.71 billion × 2) assuming a 100 per 10 000 persons incidence (6% long COVID probability). As another example, with an incidence of 250 per 10 000 persons in year 1 and 100 per 10 000 persons in year 2, long COVID would cost $15.90 billion over the 2-year period, accruing an average of 112 072 DALYs (assuming symptoms last 1 year, 10% probability of developing long COVID).
Our results showed that the current economic burden of long COVID could already exceed that of a number of conditions such as carpal tunnel ($2.7-$4.8 billion annually) [27], Lyme disease ($345-$968 million annually) [28], and psoriasis ($35.2 billion annually) [29].
Results
Simulations show that the average total cost of a long COVID case can range from $5084-$11 646 (assuming symptoms only last 1 year) with 92.5%-95.2% of these costs being productivity losses. Therefore, the current number of long COVID cases could cost society at least $2.01-$6.56 billion, employers at least $1.99-$6.49 billion in productivity losses, and third-party payers $21.0-$68.5 million annually (6%-20% probability of developing long COVID).
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
|
