Aged 18-64 and 65+ years
By: BULL-OTTERSON L., BACA S., SAYDAH S., et al.
MMWR Morb Mortal Wkly Rep, 71:713-37
The authors are affiliated with the Center for Disease Control, United States Department of Health and Human Services.
The findings in a nutshell
One in five COVID-19 survivors aged 18 to 64 years and one in four aged over 65 years experienced at least one incident ‘condition’ that might be attributable to COVID-19 infection.
Overview of the paper
Electronic health record (EHR) data from March 2020 to November 2021, for persons in the United States aged over 18 years were used to assess the incidence of 26 conditions often attributable to post COVID among patients who had received a previous COVID-19 diagnosis, compared with the incidence among matched patients without evidence of COVID-19. Patients were followed for 30 to 365 days after the index encounter until one or more incident conditions were observed or through to 31 October 2021(whichever occurred first).
COVID-19 survivors were significantly more likely than were control patients to have incident conditions that might be attributable to a previous COVID-19 infection. Among all patients aged over 18 years, 38% of case patients experienced an incident condition, compared with 16% of controls. The conditions affected multiple systems, and included cardiovascular, pulmonary, hematologic, renal, endocrine, gastrointestinal, musculoskeletal, neurologic, and psychiatric signs and symptoms.
Implications for Australian workplaces
The occurrence of post COVID incident conditions following infection might also affect a patient’s ability to contribute to the workforce and might have economic consequences for survivors and their dependents, particularly among adults aged 18 to 64 years.
Implications more broadly include those for public health practice, i.e., that implementation of COVID-19 prevention strategies, as well as routine assessment for post COVID conditions among persons previously infected is critical to reducing the incidence and impact of post COVID conditions, particularly among older adults.
To find out more about Post-COVID conditions among adult COVID-19 survivors read the full article here.
Date published: 26 May 2022