Long COVID-19 is having a significant effect on America¡¯s workforce, preventing substantial numbers of people from going back to work while others continue needing medical care long after returning to their jobs, according to a new analysis of workers¡¯ compensation claims in New York state.
The study, published Tuesday by New York¡¯s largest workers¡¯ compensation insurer, found that during the first two years of the pandemic, about 71% of people the fund classified as experiencing long COVID-19 either required continuing medical treatment or were unable to work for six months or more. More than a year after contracting the coronavirus, 18% of long COVID-19 patients had still not returned to work, more than three-fourths of them younger than 60, the analysis found.
¡°Long Covid has harmed the work force,¡± said the report, by the New York State Insurance Fund, a state agency financed by employer-paid premiums. The findings, it added, ¡°highlight long Covid as an underappreciated yet important reason for the many unfilled jobs and declining labor participation rate in the economy, and they presage a possible reduction in productivity as employers feel the strains of an increasingly sick work force.¡±
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