Pandemic costs
Long Covid and ME/CFS: The expensive legacy of pandemic
The financial consequences of Long Covid and ME/CFS are gigantic: 63 billion euros in 2024 alone. What experts are now asking to overcome the growing challenges.
Only assessing diseases according to the costs they cause can hardly do justice to them. And yet the numbers often offer amazing insights. With Long Covid and the chronic exhaustion syndrome Me/CFS – suffering, which are still hardly seen and often misunderstood – they now show for the first time how big the stress they bring with them.
While the public has long since returned to normality, researchers from the ME/CFS Research Foundation and Risklayer GmbH calculated for the first time how much the dark heir to the Corona pandemic, society and business still challenge: In 2024 alone, Long Covid and Me/CFS cost around 63 billion euros in Germany, which corresponds to around 1.5 percent of the Gross national product.
“It’s not just about medical editions”
If you collect the years 2020 to 2024, the analysts come to economic, medical and social costs of around 254 billion euros. For comparison: the entire annual health expenditure in Germany in 2024 was 538 billion euros.
What are Long Covid and ME/CFS for diseases?
The term Long covid Strictly speaking, only describes the complaints that are still there four weeks after a corona infection or have in the meantime. In the case of health problems that last for more than three months, the professional world of Post Covid speaks. In general language use, however, all the constant complaints after a corona infection that cannot be explained by medically can be explained.
ME/CFS (Myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome), on the other hand, has been around for a lot longer. The disease has been recognized by the WHO since 1969, but still has little attention in medicine. Affected people suffer from a pronounced deterioration in state of their symptoms after low physical or mental stress (PEM, so-called post-exertional malaise). The complex clinical picture includes, for example, pathological, permanent exhaustion, low resilience, cognitive disorders, pronounced pain, circulatory problems, a hypersensitivity to sensory stimuli and a disturbance of the immune system and the autonomous nervous system.
Diagnostics are complex, effective therapies are missing, symptomatic drugs are rarely prescribed and hardly reimbursed. ME/CFS can occur according to different viral infections, according to Ebstein-Barr infections, for example, to Influenza, but also to Corona. The neuroimmunological multi -organ disease, which often leads to a high degree of physical disability, is therefore repeatedly referred to as the heaviest form of long covid
But what does that actually mean – what are the costs of an illness? “It is not just about medical expenses for examinations or medication, but also about the lost workforce and the money that cannot be spent because the salary is now missing. Costs also arise if those affected have to deal with health insurance companies or insurance companies, reports or pension claims are examined,” says Jörg Heydecke, managing director of the Me/CFS Research Foundation and co-author of the study.
Diseases that you don’t have to have
Belt rose
You feel struck, a dull pain answers on the left in your chest, it radiates slowly and threatens to smash it. A few days later, red spots bloom on her chest, which group into a ribbon or belt. At the latest now it is clear: you have a shingle rose, also called herpes zoster. The Varicella Zoster virus (VZV) is to blame for this painful illness. If you put the first one, get chickenpox. This usually happens in childhood. After that, they are protected from chickenpox for a lifetime, but the pathogens remain in the body and, for example, can trigger nerve inflammation – just the notorious belt rose. The probability of a disease increases from the age of 50. The possible complications are serious: for example, if bacteria settle on the injured skin, they threaten a so -called super infection: the area also ignites, scarred it, and their skin can even turn permanently. Once the zoster bubbles have formed on their forehead or scalp, the pathogen can temporarily paralyze their facial nerves. If the virus crawled into the cells of their eye nerves, it may destroy the binding and cornea. Under certain circumstances you can blind. About every seventh who has survived a belt rose, a so -called postherpetic neuralgia, severe nerve pain develops, which lasts for months than the belt rose itself. Fortunately, you can be vaccinated against it.
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Even if the Corona pandemic has been declared, nothing will change in these amounts so quickly: the modelers assume that the financial burdens will remain or even increase in the coming years. This is also due to the fact that cases are still added. Pandemic has largely become an endemic, with wave -shaped outbursts in a society that now has certain immune protection. In addition, other infections also provide new ME/CFS sufferers.
34,000 new ME/CFS cases
The researchers calculated that more than 1.52 million people in Germany could still suffer from Long Covid or ME/CFS. While the number of active long-covid cases has decreased since 2022, the ME/CFS cases continue to rise. According to the researchers’ model, they could increase by a total of around 34,000 cases by 2028.
Without these affected and cost data, the discussion has so far been missing in terms of cleavement, says Heydecke: “We want to close this gap with these numbers.” For him, the calculations are also an argument for significantly more research.
With the report, the ME/CFS Research Foundation and Risklayer want to initiate a debate on the occasion of the International ME/CFS-Tag: How can the healthcare system, how can politics react appropriately to the growing extent of post-infectious diseases?
Long Covid and ME/CFS are enormous medical and social challenges
“The calculated damage of 63 billion euros is currently only around 15 to 20 million euros annually in public funding for diagnostics and therapy research. This is neither medically nor economically justified,” said Heydecke. ME/CFS and Long Covid are enormous medical and social problems that affected people, but also our society as a whole. Many are not even aware of that. “Most ME/CFS and Long-Covid sufferers are often invisible to society. They do not run by recognizable sickly through the area, die in large numbers or put on others. These people lie and usually suffer at home.Almost three quarters of the ME/CFS patients can no longer work, about 25 percent are completely bedridden. Some of them even voluntarily seek death and ask for euthanasia after many sick years, “says Heydecke.
According to researchers, around 3.5 percent of Long Covid sufferers develop ME/CFS in the first year. It should be around 20 percent of the patients who still suffer from Long Covid after one year. Before the pandemic, according to estimates by the Federal Association of Statutory Health Insurance Physicians, there were 350,000 ME/CFS cases. The researchers currently expect more than 650,000 cases.
“Current research results,” says Carmen Scheibenbogen, “but already show the first therapy successes and perspectives.” The professor of immunology at the Berlin Charité is one of the leading experts for Long Covid and ME/CFS. In order to test these therapies clinically, more financial support is urgently needed because “in a few years they will probably make real healing perspectives possible for some of those affected.”
Read like it goes with the have to fight and what some in their fight has.
Source: Stern
I’m Caroline, a journalist and author for 24 Hours Worlds. I specialize in health-related news and stories, bringing real-world impact to readers across the globe. With my experience in journalism and writing in both print and online formats, I strive to provide reliable information that resonates with audiences from all walks of life.
