Persistent Covid-19 cost Australia more than €5.8 billion in 2022

Sydney, (Australia), Aug 19 (EFE).- The persistent Covid-19 that affected Australian workers during 2022 cost the Australian economy some 5.812 billion euros, an academic study published this Monday.

At 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-term Covid, according to an estimate from the Australian National University study.

For the study, the academics calculated the number of working hours lost or reduced due to persistent Covid-19 symptoms up to 12 months after their initial diagnosis.

While the Australian government, one of the countries that applied the most restrictive measures to try to prevent the spread of the disease, ended the mandatory five-day quarantine for those testing positive for Covid in October 2022.

They found that COVID symptoms, especially in workers aged between 30 and 49, caused an average of 100 million hours of work lost in 2022.

“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 alongside academics from the University of New South Wales and the University of Melbourne.

“We estimate that this equates to economy-wide losses, on average, of about $9.6 billion (AUD 6.407 billion or €5.812 billion) in 2022, or a quarter of Australia’s real GDP growth that year,” Grafton said.

The study, which used mathematical models to analyse data from 5,185 adults to determine the impact of long-term Covid between January 2022 and December 2023, points out that it may have “underestimated” the economic impact.

Because “it does not take into account losses such as those of healthy employees who cannot work because they are caring for other people with long-term Covid,” the researcher points out.

The study, published in the scientific journal The Medical Journal of Australia, estimates that between 173,000 and 873,000 Australians will suffer from long-term Covid by 2024, prompting a call for this disease to be given priority in public policies.