The long-term complications of COVID-19 have heralded billions of healthcare costs

NEW YORK (Reuters)-In late March, Laura Gross (72) was recovering from gallbladder surgery at his home in Fort Lee, NJ, when she became ill again.

Her throat, head, eyes hurt, muscles and joints hurt, and she felt like she was in the fog. Her diagnosis was COVID-19. After 4 months, these symptoms will remain.

Gross is consulted by specialists including family and cardiologists, respiratory specialists, endocrinologists, neurologists, and gastroenterologists.

“I have had a headache since April. I have never stopped driving in low temperatures,” he said.

Studies of COVID-19 patients continue to uncover new disease-related complications.

With increasing evidence that some COVID-19 survivors face months, and sometimes years, of debilitating complications, healthcare professionals are investigating possible long-term cost studies. I’m starting.

Bruce Lee of the City College of New York (CUNY) School of Public Health estimates that if 20% of the US population is infected with the virus, the cost of one year of hospitalization will be at least $50 billion before long-term consideration Did. Care for protracted health problems. Without the vaccine, if 80% of the population were infected, the cost would rise to $204 billion.

According to Reuters interviews, some countries, including the United States, the United Kingdom and Italy, were hit hard by the new coronavirus and wondered if these long-term effects could be considered a’post-COVID syndrome’. I am.

Some US and Italian hospitals have created centers dedicated to the care of these patients and standardized follow-up measures.

The UK Department of Health and the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention each lead national studies of the long-term effects of COVID-19. An international panel of doctors proposes to the World Health Organization (WHO) the criteria for mid- and long-term care of patients who have recovered in August.

Number of years until cost is known

Over 17 million people worldwide are infected with the new coronavirus, about a quarter of which in the United States.

Healthcare professionals have shown that the cost of the recovered person is completely lost, as are the delays in awareness of HIV and the health implications for the first responders to the attacks on the New World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. He says it will take years to be able to calculate.

They are COVIDs for multiple organs, such as heart, lung, and kidney damage that are likely to require costly care such as regular scans and ultrasound, and neuropathy that is not yet fully understood. -19 due to damage.

According to a JAMA Cardiology study, more than 75% of patients in one group of German COVID-19 patients aged 45 to 53 have heart inflammation, increasing the likelihood of future heart failure.

A study by Kidney International found that more than one-third of COVID-19 patients in the New York healthcare system had acute kidney injury, and nearly 15% needed dialysis.

Nearly 600 COVID-19 patients are being followed up at Giovanni XXIII Hospital, said Dr. Marcolitzi, in Bergamo, Italy, the initial epicenter of the pandemic. About 30% have lung problems, 10% have nervous system problems, 10% have heart problems, and about 9% have protracted motor problems. He co-chairs the WHO Panel, which recommends long-term follow-up for patients.

“At a global level, no one knows how many people will still need testing and treatment in 3 months, 6 months, and 1 year.

More than 1,000 COVID-19 patients are being followed at the San Raffaele Hospital in Milan. According to Moreno Tresoldy, there were few major problems with heart disease, but about 30% to 40% of patients have neurological problems, and at least half have respiratory problems.

Although some of these long-term implications have only recently emerged, it is too early for health economists to study medical claims and accurately estimate costs.

In the UK and Italy, these costs will be borne by their respective governments. The government is committed to funding COVID-19 therapies, but provides few details about how much it will cost.

In the United States, more than half of the population is covered by private health insurance companies. The industry has just begun to estimate the cost of COVID-19.

Lee from CUNY estimated that the average annual cost of a COVID-19 patient in the United States after leaving the hospital was $4,000. This is due to a prolonged problem of acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS), which affects approximately 40% of patients. And sepsis.

Estimates range from patients hospitalized for moderate illness to the most severe cases, but do not include other potential complications such as heart or kidney damage.

Lee estimates that even people who do not need hospitalization will spend an average of one year after the initial illness of $1,000.

“Hard Just Just Up”

The additional costs of the prolonged impact of COVID-19 could mean higher health insurance costs in the United States. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, COVID-19 has boosted comprehensive insurance 2021 premiums by up to 8% in some healthcare plans.

Ann McKee, 61, a retired psychologist living in Atlanta, Knoxville, Tennessee, had multiple sclerosis and asthma when she was infected five months ago. She is still having trouble holding her breath.

“On a good day, you can wash your laundry several times, but for the last few days it was hard to get up and drink a drink from the kitchen,” she said.

Meanwhile, she spent over $5,000 on appointments, tests, and prescriptions. Her insurance paid over $15,000, including $240 for telemedicine appointments and $455 for lung scans.

“Many of the problems that result from severe contractions of the disease can be in the next three, five, or twenty years,” said Dale Hall, Acting Institute’s Managing Director of Research.

To understand the costs, actuaries in the United States track health records for patients with coronaviruses for years, comparing those with similar health profiles but without COVID-19.

The UK aims to track the health of 10,000 hospitalized COVID-19 patients during the first 12 months after discharge and in some cases for 25 years. Scientists conducting this study believe that it may define a long-term COVID-19 syndrome, as found in Ebola survivors in Africa.

“Many believe that there are scars in the lungs and fatigue, and possibly blood vessel damage to the brain, and possibly mental distress,” said Calum Semple at the University of Liverpool.

Margaret O’Hara, a 50-year-old who works at a Birmingham hospital, is one of many COVID-19 patients not included in the study because she had mild symptoms and was not hospitalized. However, she is absent from work because of recurrent health problems, including extreme shortness of breath.

O’Hara is worried that patients like her will not be included in the country’s long-term cost plan.

“You’ll need expensive follow-up for quite some time,” she said.