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The cost of an individual long COVID-19 case can range from $5,084 to $11,646 per year
New York, NY | March 19, 2025: The current number of long COVID-19 cases may already be costing the U.S. $2.01-6.56 billion dollars per year, according to a study recently published in the Journal of Infectious Diseases. The study also showed that each long COVID case tended to cost society between $5,084 and $11,646. These estimates are based on a computer simulation model developed by the Public Health Informatics, Computational and Operations Research (PHICOR) team based at the CUNY Graduate School of Public Health and Health Policy (CUNY SPH) working with researchers from the CUNY Institute for Implementation Science in Population Health (ISPH) and Baylor College of Medicine.
“Our results quantify the already significant burden of long COVID on society,” says the study’s senior author, CUNY SPH Professor Bruce Y. Lee, MD, MBA, executive director of PHICOR and the CUNY SPH Center for Advanced Technology and Communication in Health (CATCH). “This includes productivity losses that are hitting businesses around the country and healthcare costs that are further straining our healthcare system. These costs could end up trickling down to everyone who pays insurance premiums and taxes.”
The computational model simulates a person with a specified age getting infected with severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), having probabilities of developing long COVID, and if long COVID does result, having probabilities of suffering different long COVID symptoms over time. Each symptom can lead to the person being less productive at school or work and needing different tests, treatments, and visits to clinics, emergency rooms, and hospitals. The model can then track and tabulate the accompanying costs such as productivity losses and healthcare costs.
Running the model showed that a given long COVID case tended to cost society somewhere in the $5,084 to $11,646 range per year. The vast majority of these costs (around 95%) were productivity losses with around a quarter of these being from absenteeism and the rest being from presenteeism, wherein employees come to work, but are less productive. Running all the COVID-19 cases to date through the model generated estimates that there are currently 44.69 to 48.04 million long COVID cases in the U.S., which would cost the country $2.01 to $6.56 billion each year. The vast majority of costs(98.6%) were productivity losses or missed days from work or school and direct medical costs (doctors appointments, medical care, etc.) comprised 1.04% of total costs. This was based on the assumption that 6% of those with COVID-19 will go on to have long COVID. Studies have suggested that anywhere from 6% to 20% of those infected with SARS-CoV-2 have eventually developed long COVID. Increasing this probability from 6% to 10% results in average total societal costs per year increasing to $3.34 billion.
“We are only now fully understanding the burden of human disease and illness resulting from long COVID,” says Peter J. Hotez, MD, PhD, professor and dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine and co-author of the study. “As bad as COVID has been in terms of deaths and hospitalizations, it could be eventually matched or even exceeded by the chronic disability from this constellation of sequelae and conditions.”
Declaration of Conflict of Interest: No financial disclosures have been reported by the authors of this paper.
Media contact:
Alexis Dibbs
dibbs.alexis@gmail.com
About CUNY SPH
The CUNY Graduate School of Public Health and Health Policy (CUNY SPH) is committed to promoting and sustaining healthier populations in New York City and around the world through excellence in education, research, and service in public health and by advocating for sound policy and practice to advance social justice and improve health outcomes for all.
About PHICOR
Since 2007, PHICOR, Public Health Informatics, Computational, and Operations Research (www.PHICOR.org) has been developing computational methods, models, and tools to help decision makers better understand and address complex systems in health and public health. Follow @PHICORTeam on Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Twitter for updates.
About the CUNY ISPH
The CUNY Institute for Implementation Science in Population Health (ISPH) was founded on the notion that substantial improvements in population health can be efficiently achieved through better implementation of existing strategies, policies, and interventions across multiple sectors. With that in mind, we study how to translate and scale up evidence-based interventions and policies within clinical and community settings in order to improve population health and reduce health disparities. cunyisph.org
About Baylor College of Medicine
Baylor College of Medicine (www.bcm.edu) in Houston is recognized as a health sciences university and is known for excellence in education, research and patient care. Baylor is a top-ranked medical school and is listed 20th among all U.S. medical schools for National Institutes of Health funding and No. 1 in Texas. Located in the Texas Medical Center, Baylor has affiliations with seven teaching hospitals and jointly owns and operates Baylor St. Luke’s Medical Center, part of St. Luke’s Health. Currently, Baylor has more than 3,000 trainees in medical, graduate, nurse anesthesia, physician assistant, orthotics and genetic counseling as well as residents and postdoctoral fellows.
