Presentation (CTI)

OBJECTIVES: Long COVID - COVID-19 symptoms or sequelae that persist for longer than three months - continues to be a significant public health problem. There is reported variability in individuals' experience of long COVID, thus to understand the burden of long COVID is it important to draw on a range of data. We estimate the health-related quality of life (HRQoL) decrement of long COVID by pooling data from multiple cohort studies.
METHODS: We utilise three UK long COVID studies: Recovery, PHOSP and Coverscan which each collected EQ-5D-5L data on individuals with long COVID symptoms. Each study had different recruitment criteria providing variability across severity of initial infection (hospitalised or not) and therefore variability in the long COVID condition. Pooling of individual data was not possible given data governance, therefore we undertook a meta analysis of the means and standard deviations of the EQ-5D utilities by age group and gender. The HRQoL shortfall was estimated relative to EQ-5D age/gender population norms from the Health Survey for England.
RESULTS: The estimated HRQoL shortfall finds that the decrement is larger for females than males and greatest for the younger age groups. For example, for females aged 30-39 years old the EQ-5D utility decrement is -0.297 (95%CI -0.319, -0.275); for males aged 30-39 years old the EQ-5D utility decrement is -0.191 (95%CI -0.222, -0.160). That is the burden of long COVID is felt most by females aged <40 years old.
CONCLUSIONS: The estimated burden, that is the HRQoL EQ-5D shortfall, is greatest for younger women, this aligns with the clinical literature. Given the risk of long COVID is greatest for females, and younger age groups are often not prioritised for COVID boosters, this finding has potential policy implications.