{"doi":"10.1093/infdis/jiaf030","title":"The Current and Future Burden of Long COVID in the United States","abstract":"BACKGROUND: Long coronavirus disease (COVID), which affects an estimated 44.69-48.04 million people in the United States, is an ongoing public health concern that will persist as severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) continues to spread. METHODS: We developed a computational simulation model representing the clinical course, health effects, and associated costs of a person with long COVID. RESULTS: Simulations show that the average total cost of a long COVID case can range from $5084-$11 646 (assuming symptoms only last 1 year) with 92.5%-95.2% of these costs being productivity losses. Therefore, the current number of long COVID cases could cost society at least $2.01-$6.56 billion, employers at least $1.99-$6.49 billion in productivity losses, and third-party payers $21.0-$68.5 million annually (6%-20% probability of developing long COVID). These cases would accrue 35 808-121 259 quality-adjusted life-years (QALYs) lost and 13 484-45 468 disability-adjusted life-years (DALYs) and would rise as COVID-19 incidence increases. CONCLUSIONS: The current health and economic burden of long COVID may already exceed that of a number of other chronic diseases and will continue to grow each year as COVID-19 cases increase. This could be a significant drain on businesses, third-party payers, the healthcare system, and society.","journal":"The Journal of Infectious Diseases","year":2025,"id":509349,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":36,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9314,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2025-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":957862,"name":"Kevin L. Chin","orcid":"0000-0001-8715-7016","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":231474,"name":"Ulrich Strych","orcid":"0000-0001-9455-7683","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1233581,"name":"Danielle C. John","orcid":null,"position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1363293,"name":"Tej Shah","orcid":"0009-0004-8237-7254","position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":231472,"name":"María Elena Bottazzi","orcid":"0000-0002-8429-0476","position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":231471,"name":"Kelly J. O’Shea","orcid":"0000-0003-4957-5975","position":6,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":104610,"name":"McKaylee Robertson","orcid":"0000-0002-8426-6572","position":7,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":961116,"name":"Colleen Weatherwax","orcid":"0000-0001-5929-518X","position":8,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1161344,"name":"Jessie Heneghan","orcid":"0009-0007-5274-9864","position":9,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":849796,"name":"Marie F. Martinez","orcid":"0000-0002-8725-1894","position":10,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1233079,"name":"Allan Ciciriello","orcid":"0000-0002-4733-1216","position":11,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":472970,"name":"Sarah Kulkarni","orcid":"0000-0002-0807-339X","position":12,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1233080,"name":"Kavya Velmurugan","orcid":"0009-0001-8183-7464","position":13,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1241630,"name":"Alexis Dibbs","orcid":"0009-0001-5871-6023","position":14,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":957863,"name":"Sheryl A. Scannell","orcid":"0000-0003-2784-6279","position":15,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":346851,"name":"Yanhan Shen","orcid":"0000-0002-9703-4412","position":16,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":104608,"name":"Denis Nash","orcid":"0000-0002-3280-5386","position":17,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":42798,"name":"Peter J. Hotez","orcid":"0000-0001-8770-1042","position":18,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":231476,"name":"Bruce Y. Lee","orcid":"0000-0003-2633-8651","position":19,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":231470,"name":"Sarah M. Bartsch","orcid":"0000-0002-0523-4717","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":28,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-19T02:47:24.513904Z","pmid":"39842946","pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}