An academic study published this Monday shows that the long Covid-19 that affected Australian workers during 2022 cost the country’s economy around 5.8 billion euros.
A study by The Australian National University estimates that at the peak of the pandemic in Australia in September 2022, between 310,000 and 1.3 million Australians were suffering from symptoms related to long Covid.
For the study, academics calculated the number of working hours lost or reduced due to persistence of Covid-19 symptoms up to 12 months after the initial diagnosis.
The Australian government – one of the countries that implemented the most restrictive measures to stop the spread of the disease – ended the mandatory five-day quarantine for anyone testing positive for Covid in October 2022.
The researchers found that an average of 100 million working hours were lost in 2022 due to Covid symptoms, particularly among workers aged 30 to 49.
“This equates to an average loss of eight hours per employed person per year,” said Quentin Grafton, a researcher at the Australian National University who participated in the study with academics from the University of New South Wales and the University of New South Wales in Melbourne.
“We estimate that this equates to an economy-wide loss, on average, of about $9.6 billion [australianos – cerca de 5,8 mil milhões de euros] in 2022, or a quarter of Australia’s real GDP growth that year”, Grafton highlighted.
The research, which analysed data from 5,185 adults to determine the impact of long Covid between January 2022 and December 2023, concluded that the economic impact is likely underestimated.
This is because “it does not take into account the loss of healthy staff who cannot work because they are caring for others with long-term Covid”, Grafton highlighted.
The study, published in the scientific publication The Medical Journal of Australia, estimates that between 173,000 and 873,000 Australians will suffer from long Covid by 2024, and calls for the disease to be prioritised in public policies.
