A new analysis suggests that "COVID infection is associated with a sharp spike in healthcare use and costs during the acute illness phase, but those differences diminish substantially over time." CIDRAP has the news.

The study compared 937,077 Medicare beneficiaries as having COVID-19 from February 2020 to November 2022 with more than 4.8 million who did not have COVID. Participants were followed for up to 40 weeks after diagnosis and researchers "examined differences in symptoms and healthcare use and spending."

In the week immediately following a COVID diagnosis, "beneficiaries were 41.71 percentage points more likely than those in the control group to receive at least one diagnosis for a postacute-COVID symptom." That difference declined to 5.22 from week one to week 12, and declined yet further after that. Healthcare spending "followed a similar trajectory."

These findings are at odds with previous surveys that suggest that "4.5% to 6.5% of older adults experience long COVID." One possible explanation for this may be that "symptoms may go unrecorded if beneficiaries don't seek healthcare. Other factors could include underreporting when healthcare is used and difficulty distinguishing long COVID symptoms from preexisting chronic illnesses in older populations."