These data come from of a report released Jan. 24 by the New York State Insurance Fund, a government agency funded by employer contributions. The report covers the first two years of the pandemic, through March 31, 2022. Just over 3,100 workers’ claims met the Fund’s definition of long COVID.
And it is possible that these figures are conservative, since some people may have been unable or unwilling to take time off, despite their symptoms, or did not apply for benefits. On the other hand, the New York report estimates that cases are decreasing in 2021 compared to 2020, a result of the vaccination campaign — as the vaccine reduces the risk of serious cases, it is presumed that it reduces the risk at the same time of infections leading to long COVID.
Still, a large part of the causes of the “long COVID” are still obscure. Symptoms vary from person to person, but are both physical (muscle and joint pain, heart palpitations, etc.) and neurological (ranging from extreme fatigue to loss of taste and smell). Women are more at risk than men. The medical community continues to question what makes some people likely to have symptoms for more than a year, rather than a few weeks.
And these data raise once more the question of the role, possibly underestimated, from the long COVID in the labor crisis hitting the United States and Canada, among others. It is indeed possible that a certain number of men and women who have been classified for two years in the category of those who do not want to return to work, are simply unable to return because of these symptoms.
Moreover, contrary to what some have mentioned over the past two years, these are not people who would have been of retirement age: among the 18% who had still not returned to work following a year , three-quarters were under 60 years old.
The new figures, the report reads, make long-lasting COVID a possibly significant cause of this labor shortage and “portend to a possible reduction in productivity, as employers come under pressure from an increasingly suffering working population”.
The question is whether what is happening in New York State matches what is happening elsewhere in the world. au canada, a 2021 survey of 1,000 workers diagnosed with long-term COVID, found that half of them had to cut their hours. In a follow-up in 2022, several had still not returned to work. In Quebec last yearthe Standards, Equity, Health and Safety Commission reported having had to compensate, between March 2020 and May 2022, 662 workers for at least six months, consecutive or not, for “occupational injuries” caused by the long COVID.
