A big study on the impact of long COVID found increased rates of health system use 2 months after infection with SARS-CoV-2, which has implications for health care delivery in the longer term. The study, which included greater than half one million people in Ontario, Canada, is published in CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal).

Researchers checked out ICES data on 531 702 people in Ontario, 268 521 of whom tested positive on a PCR test for the virus that causes COVID-19 between January 1, 2020, and December 31, 2021. They compared health care use, including clinic visits, emergency visits, days in hospital, home care visits and days in long-term care, between individuals who tested positive and other people who were otherwise similar but tested negative. Two months or more after their infection, health care use was more frequent amongst individuals who tested positive, especially women.

The mean age of the study population was 44 years, and 51% were female.

The best increase in health care use was in a small subset of the population -; about 1% of people that tested positive for SARS-CoV-2. These patients spent an additional week or more in hospital over the next 12 months in comparison with individuals who weren’t infected, based on the study.

In early 2022, it was estimated that just about half (45%) the population of Canada had been infected with SARS-CoV-2. Based on these numbers, the authors predict heavy heath care use in the longer term, with 1% of infected people using nearly 7% of hospital days that were available in Canada before the COVID-19 pandemic. To compound health system pressure, there are fewer staffed hospital beds now than before the pandemic.

Given the variety of recent infections, our findings portend substantial health care use by people in Canada. For family medicine doctors who had 20 clinic visits per day before the COVID-19 pandemic, based on the number of individuals in Canada who were recently infected, they may need to seek out time and resources for 100 more clinic visits per 12 months, and there are fewer physicians now than before the pandemic.”

Dr. Candace McNaughton, Emergency Physician, Sunnybrook Research Institute, Toronto, Ontario

Most individuals who were infected with SARS-CoV-2 won’t have more health care encounters, but they will likely be competing for scarcer health care resources, as will the 1% of individuals whose health care needs increase substantially.

Increased demand of this magnitude would require substantial population-level restructuring and investment of resources.

“We hope this information will help those in leadership and government prepare for health care demand brought on by long COVID,” says coauthor Dr. Clare Atzema, an emergency physician at Sunnybrook Research Institute and Senior Scientist at ICES, Toronto, Ontario.

Source:

Canadian Medical Association Journal

Journal reference:

https://www.cmaj.ca/lookup/doi/10.1503/cmaj.220728