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Impact of Long COVID on productivity and informal caregiving

Kwon, Joseph; Milne, Ruairidh; Rayner, Clare; Rocha Lawrence, Román; Mullard, Jordan; Mir, Ghazala; Delaney, Brendan; Sivan, Manoj; Petrou, Stavros

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Authors

Joseph Kwon

Ruairidh Milne

Clare Rayner

Román Rocha Lawrence

Ghazala Mir

Brendan Delaney

Manoj Sivan

Stavros Petrou



Abstract

Background
Around 2 million people in the UK suffer from Long COVID (LC). Of concern is the disease impact on productivity and informal care burden. This study aimed to quantify and value productivity losses and informal care receipt in a sample of LC patients in the UK.

Methods
The target population comprised LC patients referred to LC specialist clinics. The questionnaires included a health economics questionnaire (HEQ) measuring productivity impacts, informal care receipt and service utilisation, EQ-5D-5L, C19-YRS LC condition-specific measure, and sociodemographic and COVID-19 history variables. Outcomes were changes from the incident infection resulting in LC to the month preceding the survey in paid work status/h, work income, work performance and informal care receipt. The human capital approach valued productivity losses; the proxy goods method valued caregiving hours. The values were extrapolated nationally using published prevalence data. Multilevel regressions, nested by region, estimated associations between the outcomes and patient characteristics.

Results
366 patients responded to HEQ (mean LC duration 449.9 days). 51.7% reduced paid work hours relative to the pre-infection period. Mean monthly work income declined by 24.5%. The average aggregate value of productivity loss since incident infection was £10,929 (95% bootstrap confidence interval £8,844-£13,014) and £5.7 billion (£3.8-£7.6 billion) extrapolated nationally. The corresponding values for informal caregiving were £8,726 (£6,247-£11,204) and £4.8 billion (£2.6-£7.0 billion). Multivariate analyses found significant associations between each outcome and health utility and C19-YRS subscale scores.

Conclusion
LC significantly impacts productivity losses and provision of informal care, exacerbated by high national prevalence of LC.

Citation

Kwon, J., Milne, R., Rayner, C., Rocha Lawrence, R., Mullard, J., Mir, G., …Petrou, S. (2023). Impact of Long COVID on productivity and informal caregiving. European Journal of Health Economics, https://doi.org/10.1007/s10198-023-01653-z

Journal Article Type Article
Acceptance Date Nov 21, 2023
Online Publication Date Dec 26, 2023
Publication Date Dec 26, 2023
Deposit Date Jan 9, 2024
Publicly Available Date Jan 9, 2024
Journal The European Journal of Health Economics
Print ISSN 1618-7598
Electronic ISSN 1618-7601
Publisher Springer
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
DOI https://doi.org/10.1007/s10198-023-01653-z
Keywords Informal caregiver burden, Long COVID, Productivity, Health economic evaluation
Public URL https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/2117466

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Published Journal Article (Advance Online Version) (1.3 Mb)
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Licence
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Publisher Licence URL
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Copyright Statement
This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.





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