As COVID-19 moves from the pandemic to endemic stage, the disease can leave a lingering legacy in the form of long COVID. 

In the United Kingdom, for example, the Office for National Statistics says that 200,000 people reported symptoms of long COVID in April 2022, bringing the national number to 2.1 million, or 3.1 per cent of the population.

In Israel, a study by Maccabi Healthcare Services found that half of those who reported symptoms of fatigue after contracting the coronavirus are still suffering 18 months later.

In medical journal The Lancet, a study has been published claiming that 46 per cent of people with long COVID were forced to reduce their number of hours worked. 

So far, there have been more than 544 million reported cases of COVID-19 globally, and it is estimated that up to 30 per cent of these people could subsequently develop long COVID.

Quantifying the challenge

The emergence of a new chronic disease has potential implications for the insurance industry, with the scale of the challenge compounded by the fact that very little is so far known about long COVID, other than the common symptom of fatigue and ‘brain fog’, problems with memory and concentration, and joint and muscle pain.

Dr Achim Regenauer, chief medical officer at global reinsurer PartnerRe, says that while there are now more than 200 noted symptoms of long COVID, there is still no widely accepted clinical case definition, no laboratory or imaging diagnostics and no effective treatment.

He believes there could be several versions of long COVID, not just one. 

And, he adds, although the insurance industry understands that long COVID will impact on morbidity trends and life and health insurance underwriting, there is still considerable uncertainty — and this is likely to continue for some time.

‘First of all, we have to understand long COVID better in clinical medicine,’ says Dr Regenauer. ‘This is very often a subjective disease with symptoms described by the patient, but how can this be turned into objective, measurable phenomena?

‘The general practitioner notes down the symptoms but cannot measure the fatigue of a patient who says they can’t walk more than 500 metres, and there are no imaging results from chest X-rays whatsoever.’

The industry has techniques for pricing this kind of risk, however, based on its experience dealing with other long-term health conditions and diseases such as hepatitis.

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