Abstract:
The objective of this paper is to model lost Quality Adjusted Life Years (QALYs) from symptoms arising from COVID-19 disease in the UK population, including symptoms of ‘long-COVID’. The scope includes QALYs lost to symptoms, but not deaths, due to acute COVID-19 and long-COVID. The prevalence of symptomatic COVID-19, encompassing acute symptoms and long-COVID symptoms, was modelled using a decay function. Permanent injury as a result of COVID-19 infection, was modelled as a fixed prevalence. Both parts were combined to calculate QALY loss due to COVID-19 symptoms. Assuming a 60% final attack rate for SARS-CoV-2 infection in the population, we modelled 299,730 QALYs lost within 1 year of infection (90% due to symptomatic COVID-19 and 10% permanent injury) and 557,764 QALYs lost within 10 years of infection (49% due to symptomatic COVID-19 and 51% due to permanent injury). The UK Government willingness-to-pay to avoid these QALY losses would be £17.9 billion and £32.2 billion, respectively.
Additionally, 90,143 people were subject to permanent injury from COVID-19 (0.14% of the population). Given the ongoing development in information in this area, we present a model framework for calculating the health economic impacts of symptoms following SARS-CoV-2 infection. This model framework can aid in quantifying the adverse health impact of COVID-19, long-COVID and permanent injury following COVID-19 in society and assist the proactive management of risk posed to health. Further research is needed using standardised measures of patient reported outcomes relevant to long-COVID and applied at a population level.
Source: Martin C, Luteijn M, Letton W, Robertson J, McDonald S. A model framework for projecting the prevalence and impact of Long-COVID in the UK. PLoS One. 2021 Dec 2;16(12):e0260843. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0260843. PMID: 34855874; PMCID: PMC8639065. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8639065/ (Full text)