• Posted December 9, 2024

Long COVID Is Taking Toll on Americans' Finances

Long COVID is placing a financial strain on many Americans, a new study reports.

People with Long COVID have a harder time paying their bills, buying groceries and maintaining utility service, researchers reported recently in the journal Health Services Research.

Much of this financial hardship is the result of lost jobs and reduced working hours, and it affects people of every socioeconomic status, researchers said.

“Long COVID is very much a problem that is affecting people’s lives right now,” said lead researcher Ishtiaque Fazlul, an assistant professor with the University of Georgia. “And it’s affecting people from all walks of life in terms of financial hardship.”

However, those in lower-income households have been hit hardest, the researchers noted.

For the study, researchers analyzed data on more than 271,000 U.S. adults gathered as part of a federal survey on risky behaviors for health.

Nearly 8% of the people surveyed had symptoms reflecting Long COVID, researchers said.

Results show that those with Long COVID were more likely to have food insecurity, ranging up to a 10 percentage point increase among those with the lowest income.

Likewise, Long COVID patients were more likely to struggle paying bills, up to an 11 percentage point increase among the lowest-income folks, the study says.

And Long COVID patients were more likely to have their water, power or other utilities cut off, up to a 9 percentage point increase among the lowest incomes, results show.

As much as 20% of these associations between Long COVID and financial hardship are caused by people losing their jobs or having their work hours cut, researchers found.

All in all, this is bad news for the nearly 18 million Americans living with Long COVID, which can last for months or even years. Symptoms include “brain fog,” headaches, fatigue, breathing problems, heart palpitations, changes in taste or smell, joint or muscle pain or GI distress.

Previous studies have found that people with lower incomes are more apt to become infected with COVID. When they do become infected, they also tend to be sicker and die at higher rates than more wealthy people.

Low-income Americans might have a harder time staying afloat because they don’t have the means of those making more money, including the ability to work from home or draw from savings, researchers said.

“Lower income groups probably have less savings and less to fall back on if something happens with their job,” Fazlul said in a university news release. “Lower socioeconomic groups also tend to have more hands-on jobs that have less opportunity to work from home.”

“If their income decreases even by a little bit, they may cross a threshold that makes them food-insecure and makes it difficult to pay bills,” Fazlul continued.

Employers and policymakers could help these folks by providing more flexibility in working from home, increasing job security, or improving access to credit, researchers said.

“People’s financial well-being is being affected by Long COVID,” Fazlul said. “That’s something we should care about.”

More information

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has more about long COVID.

SOURCE: University of Georgia, news release, Dec. 2, 2024