More than 30,000 Australians hit by long COVID

The New Daily
Aug 26, 2022, updated Aug 26, 2022

The effects of long COVID are being felt across Australian workplaces

An estimated 31,000 Australian workers are calling in sick every day because of the debilitating symptoms of long-COVID.

Treasury data given to News Corp papers show 12 per cent of the labour force is staying home sick because of the long term after effects of the virus.

“Our labour market has been absolutely smashed by COVID and by long COVID,” Treasurer Jim Chalmers said on Friday.

Dr Chalmers said the impact of illness on the workforce would be discussed at next week’s federal skills and jobs summit.

“We want a healthy workforce, we want a productive workforce and we want a well-paid workforce – and all of these challenges are intertwined,” he said.

According to data from the Department of Treasury three million working days were affected impacted by people suffering the effects of long COVID in the first six months of 2022 alone.

Earlier this week, the Food Supply Chain Alliance said significant labour shortages would continue to wreak havoc on food supply and prices.

It warned that high prices and reduced availability would continue throughout 2022 ‘‘and beyond’’, unless solutions to the worker shortage were found.

NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet has renewed his push to cut the required seven-day isolation period to five days for people who test positive for COVID.

Mr Perrottet plans to bring it up at next week’s national cabinet meeting with his state, territory and federal counterparts.

But University of South Australia professor of biostatistics Adrian Esterman has warned that five days of isolation would be largely ineffective, because most people with COVID were still infectious after five days.

‘‘I don’t think [five days of isolation] is sensible. I think we should probably keep it at seven days with testing procedure around it,’’ he said.

Another leading epidemiologist, Professor Raina MacIntyre said Australians would be wrong to think the pandemic was over.

“The counter-narratives that are flying around, ‘Let’s get back to normal, take off your masks’, it’s denial,” Professor MacIntyre, who leads the biosecurity program at the Kirby Institute in Sydney, said on Wednesday.

“Societally, we’re grieving for the lives we had in 2019 before COVID.

“We haven’t come to that stage of just accepting it and saying, ‘OK, this is here to stay and if we want to have a reasonable quality of life and not end up debilitated with chronic diseases, we’ve actually got to change the way we live’.”

Professor MacIntyre said Australia must begin to address building design, and how to mitigate the risk and make it safer.

The comments came after she gave a presentation to an emergency management conference in Adelaide this week, where she outlined key strategies to navigate a better future in the COVID-19 era.

Meanwhile, NSW and Victoria reported a combined 8580 cases of coronavirus on Friday, with 5645 and 2935 new infections respectively.

NSW reported 1780 people in hospital with the virus while Victoria had 386.

Victoria reported 25 deaths of people infected with COVID-19, NSW reported 22.