Over the past three years, COVID-19 has devastated businesses.
After the initial wave of disruptions caused by global government orders to work from home, there has been an unprecedented surge in workers infected with the virus.
Despite the fact that most organizations have long opened their doors for business and want to welcome employees back to work, it seems that the coronavirus has not yet gotten the memo.
Every month, research shows that more than a million people have fallen ill since the pandemic began. But for some professionals, the symptoms of covid have replaced several business days set aside due to illness.
Now that COVID has been in the American workforce for a long time, new research shows that it prevents many people who suffer from brain fog-like symptoms months after being infected from returning to work.
Long Covid: Too sick to work
The study, published in the Jama Network, examined more than 15,000 COVID-19 patients aged 18 to 69 in all 50 US states and found that 15% reported having prolonged COVID symptoms ranging from dizziness to shortness of breath.
Of the 2,236 participants who reported experiencing prolonged COVID symptoms, 12% were unemployed, compared to a 9% unemployment rate for those who did not.
Although the researchers adjusted for sociodemographic factors such as age, sex, region, and race and ethnicity, they found that prolonged COVID was associated with a higher likelihood of being unemployed.
Meanwhile, nearly half of those with prolonged COVID symptoms complained of cognitive-related symptoms such as brain fog or memory impairment that affected their ability to work.
The main author of the research, Roy Perlis, said that there is a “tendency to dismiss the symptoms” but the results show that cognitive symptoms are not only “important because they bother people, but also important because they have real implications in terms of functioning.”
And the findings correspond to the clinical experience of professor Danielle Sandsmark at the Penn Neuro Covid Clinic, who stated that “cognitive effects and fatigue are the main reasons I hear from patients why they cannot return to their work.”
“Cognitive symptoms, in particular, are not associated with physical disability, but the data show that these symptoms are associated with tangible effects, like returning to work,” Jama said.
But long-term COVID sufferers want to work
Many professionals are leaving the workforce after the pandemic – with work-life balance, long social distance and the search for more meaning in life, these are some of the factors driving this trend.
But the rather bleak reality that research highlights is that a group of working professionals now consider themselves unfit for work, after being infected with the coronavirus.
Of those who are currently unemployed due to prolonged COVID-related debilitating symptoms, 40% of them were working full-time before the pandemic. In contrast, only 28% of unemployed participants who did not experience long-term COVID had been working pre-pandemic.
And in general, long-time COVID sufferers want to return to work with nearly 58% now looking for work.
The proportion of workers with long-term COVID who want to work but are still unemployed shows an imbalance, which the report suggests is down to workplaces not making appropriate adjustments for people with disabilities.
But it’s not all bad news. There are signs that COVID will soon be out – albeit slowly.
A new Kaiser Family Foundation report using data from the Household Pulse Survey, a collaboration between several US federal agencies, found that the percentage of people reporting long-term covid symptoms has decreased since June 2022, from 19% to 11% in January 2023.
“I always think that what we see clinically is that most people who have had COVID for a long time are getting better over time — not necessarily perfect, but better,” Sandsmark agreed.
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