Health insurance study on Long-Covid: sick leave for an average of three months

Not only fatalities, but also long-term health impairments are a serious consequence of the corona pandemic.

The Techniker-Krankenkasse (TK) presented evaluations of data from their employed insured persons who tested positive in 2020.

Accordingly, "Long-Covid", i.e. the illness after the acute infection, can often lead to longer-term sick leave.

According to TK, even slight infections led to an average of 90 days of absence in the following year.

Corona patients who had to be treated in hospital were on sick leave for an average of 168 days, and patients requiring ventilation even 190 days.

The average for all patient groups was 105 days.

According to the data summarized in the TK health report, insured persons with a corona infection in 2020 had a risk of almost one percent of being on sick leave in the following year.

This may appear to be a small proportion, says TK boss Jens Baas.

"But these are only the patients who have also been on sick leave with this specific diagnosis - we also assume that there are many unreported cases." According to TK, the diagnosis key for post-Covid is often not used, such as the syndrome from a duration of three months is mentioned.

This has only been around since November 2020 anyway.

Every eighth insured person is on sick leave because of Corona

While there was a “relatively cheap sick leave” in 2021 due to a lower burden of illness from other infectious diseases, as Thomas Grobe from the aQua Institute said when presenting the report, every eighth worker with TK insurance was on sick leave due to corona disease.

In total, there were around 1.3 million days of absence.

But these figures are also based exclusively on proven incapacity to work.

According to estimates for 2021, there could have been 10 million days of absence caused by corona infections, says Grobe.

According to TK, many people with long-Covid symptoms such as severe fatigue did not even take sick leave.

In any case, the symptoms are diverse: they range from reduced resilience and extreme fatigue to shortness of breath and headaches to muscle and joint pain.

“Long-Covid can massively restrict the lives of those affected,” explained the Berlin lung specialist Christian Gogoll when the report was presented – he is affected by this himself.

"Shortness of breath, exhaustion, nerve pain, the smallest activity leads to stress in everyday life." At first he did not manage to go to the first floor due to shortness of breath.

Colleagues would not have believed him.

He's doing better now, but normal office work is still a challenge.

Huge need for research

Gogoll recommends patients to make it clear that they had a serious viral infection - and to consult their family doctor as a contact person.

“So far, there have been no drug treatment options,” he says.

Studies are still in the starting blocks, the need for research is "of course enormous".

Gogoll says that some patients are hoping for antibody therapies or other specific therapies that have not yet been available.

"We are a long way from that." There is also a long backlog of therapy with regard to the pulmonary specialist and psychotherapeutic treatment.

Since only data from people who fell ill in 2020 could be analyzed for the report, according to TK boss Jens Baas, it is not yet possible to foresee "what may still be in store for us".

"The general data quality in the German healthcare system is devastatingly bad," says Baas.

Diagnostic data would only be available to cash registers around nine months after they were created.

Some studies are to examine the effects of long-Covid in the country in the near future.

As the Saxon Ministry of Research announced on Tuesday, the state has provided around 2.5 million euros for a study at the University of Leipzig that is intended to research the long-term effects of the infection.

The researchers are building on data from an earlier study to compare the health of people with Covid-19 with that of people without an infection - they can also use extensive brain examinations.

"Saxony is particularly affected by the Covid 19 epidemic," explains the ministry: One in 250 citizens in Saxony died of or with Corona.

"Research into long-Covid disease is just beginning," explains Markus Löffler, head of the Institute for Medical Informatics.