NAt the height of the pandemic in Australia in September 2022, between 310,000 and 1.3 million Australians were suffering from symptoms related to long Covid, the study by The Australian National University estimated.
For the study, academics calculated the number of work hours lost or reduced due to persistent COVID-19 symptoms up to 12 months after initial diagnosis.
The Australian government – one of the countries that implemented the most restrictive measures to try to prevent the spread of the disease – ended the mandatory five-day quarantine in October 2022 for anyone who tested positive for Covid.
Researchers found that COVID-19 symptoms, especially in workers aged 30 to 49, led to an average of 100 million hours of lost work in 2022.
“This equates to an average loss of eight hours per person employed per year,” said Quentin Grafton, a researcher at the Australian National University who worked on the study with academics from the University of New South Wales and the University of Melbourne.
“We estimate that this amounts to losses across the economy, 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 gross domestic product growth in that year,” Grafton stressed.
The research, which analyzed data from 5,185 adults to determine the impact of long Covid between January 2022 and December 2023, concluded that the economic impact is possibly underestimated.
This is because it “does not take into account losses such as those of healthy employees who cannot work because they are caring for others with long Covid,” Grafton pointed out.
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 considered a priority in public policies.
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Source: https://www.noticiasaominuto.com/mundo/2617325/covid-19-longa-custou-a-australia-5-8-mil-milhoes-de-euros-em-2022
