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Long COVID is likely to cost the U.S. economy trillions of dollars and will almost certainly affect multiple industries, from restaurants struggling to replace low-wage workers, to airlines scrambling to replace crew, to overwhelmed hospitals, experts are predicting.

"There's a lot we need to do to understand what it takes to enable disabled people to participate more in the economy," says Katie Bach, a senior fellow with Brookings Institution and the author of a study looking into long COVID's impact on the labor market.

Data from June 2022 from the CDC shows that of the 40 percent of American adults who contracted COVID-19, nearly 1 in 5 still have long COVID symptoms. That works out to 1 in 13, or 7.5 percent, of the overall U.S. adult population.

Drawing from the CDC data, Bach estimates in her August 2022 report that as many 4 million working-age Americans are too sick with long COVID to perform their jobs. That works out to as much as $230 billion in lost wages, or almost 1 percent of the U.S. GDP. Head over to Medscape to read the full story.