COVID-19 Long-term Impact

Project Background

Long-COVID, also known as “post-COVID conditions” or “post-acute COVID-19 syndrome”, amongst others, is a complex condition characterized by symptoms that persist weeks to months after acute COVID-19 illness. These symptoms may be mild to severe and involve a range of body systems, including the respiratory, circulatory, nervous, gastrointestinal and musculoskeletal systems. Small clinical studies indicate that approximately 30% to 70% of individuals diagnosed with COVID-19 may experience long-COVID, depending, in part, on disease severity. Consequently, given the large number of COVID-19 cases in Canada and worldwide, long-COVID could have a major population-level impact on health status and healthcare utilization. Comprehensive population-level analyses are therefore essential to characterize the constellation of symptoms that make up long-COVID and to identify the demographic, clinical, social and other risk factors associated with this condition. 

Objectives 

Leveraging data from the BCC19C, our project seeks to characterize the burden of long-COVID in British Columbia and Ontario, Canada through a health equity lens by:  

  1. Determining risk factors and population-level burden of health outcomes, resource use, and healthcare costs attributable to the long-term impacts of COVID-19 
  2. Mapping the clusters of syndromes indicative of the long-term impact of COVID-19 to determine attributable incidence, risk factors and burden of syndromes that are associated with the long-term impact of COVID-19 

Funded by: Canadian Institutes for Health Research  

Collaborators: Dr. Beate Sander, Dr. Sharmistha Mishra, Dr. Jeff Kwong, Dr. Alyson Wong 

Principal Investigator: Dr. Naveed Janjua, Dr. Hind Sbihi