After graduating in the spring of 2020, Clare
Banaszewski landed her dream job as a nurse practitioner in a maternity ward at
a hospital in
Omaha, Nebraska.
اضافة اعلان
That winter, Banaszewski, 24, contracted the
coronavirus. It was a mild case, and she bounced back after two weeks. But it
was not long before she started feeling new symptoms: She was overcome with
fatigue, struggling to make it through her 12-hour shifts, which used to fly
by. She felt heart palpitations, suffered from cognitive problems, and had
severe headaches — telltale symptoms of a condition known as “long
COVID.”
She took three months of medical leave and
started back with shortened, six-hour shifts. Even those were too much. Her
manager was understanding, but she eventually told Banaszewski that the
hospital would need to hire a replacement. Banaszewski resigned six months ago.
She has been unemployed since.
“It’s scary,” she said. “I have a lot of
student loans I’m trying to figure out how I’m going to pay off. I don’t really
have much to fall back on.”
Banaszewski is one of at least 7 million
people in the
US, by one estimate, who are unable to work full time or who have
had to scale back their work because of long COVID-19, which is defined as when
COVID-19 symptoms persist weeks, months, or even years after the initial onset
of an infection.
Upended
careers
Some
research has shown that lingering
COVID-19 symptoms are more prevalent in
people in their 30s and 40s — when workers are often in the prime of their
careers. That’s according to a British government study, published this month,
that found that the ailment was also most prevalent in women, people living in
deprived areas, and those working in social care, teaching or health care, or
having another disability.
“We’ve got to, (…) recognize that the
majority of people will be of working age, and we need to facilitate these guys
working in an environment that allows them to recover while working,” said
Fauzia Begum, an occupational health doctor for Britain’s National Health
Service and the medical head of a countywide long COVID-19 program in
Derbyshire, England. “If you don’t do that, you end up in a position where you
have a lot of people who are off work.”
Begum and her colleagues have seen firsthand
how patients who overexert themselves in the early stages of recovery can end
up prolonging their symptoms.
The key difference between long COVID-19 and other disabilities is that the virus is airborne and transmitted in the workplace and during commutes ...
Nisa Malli, a labor researcher who has long
COVID-19, said she returned to work too soon and later needed to take off a
long period to recover. Malli, who said she feels 90 percent better two years
after contracting the virus, added that she was lucky that her employer allowed
her to work remotely and offered a phased return to work.
Other types of workers, however, such as
chefs who lost their sense of smell or software developers who could not
remember codes they wrote before they were sick, may have to change careers and
need support for retraining programs, said Malli, a member of the Patient-Led
Research Collaborative, a group of long
COVID-19 patients who are researching
the disease.
The key difference between long COVID-19 and
other disabilities is that the virus is airborne and transmitted in the
workplace and during commutes, Malli said. It is also different because of the
numbers of people it has affected.
“We’ve never had a post-viral illness at this
scale,” she said, “where a medium-sized employer is going to see multiple
workers getting COVID initially and have long-term complications.”
A study published in January by the
Brookings Institution found that long COVID-19 could account for 15 percent of the
millions of unfilled jobs in the US.
‘Another unequal burden’
Some
countries in Western Europe have robust policies to protect those with
disabilities, said Philippa Dunne, one of the authors of a report published by
the Solve Long COVID Initiative, a nonprofit research and advocacy group.
In the US, however, there are fewer
protections. Since people who are unvaccinated may be at a higher risk for
developing long COVID-19, according to the
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, companies in regions with low vaccination rates, like the South,
may have more worker shortages than those in regions with higher vaccination
rates, Dunne said.
“It’s going to be another unequal burden,”
Dunne said. “The South already has a much higher rate of people on disability
than the Northeast and the Midwest. That also is going to be made worse.”
A major logistical hurdle for US employees
with long COVID-19 is qualifying for unemployment benefits. There is no single
test for diagnosing it, and it is only vaguely defined, with so much still
unknown. That can make it harder for people to be diagnosed and gain access to
disability benefits. It can also complicate responses from employers, who are
still navigating how to handle coronavirus-related work issues, including the
fraught issue of whether COVID-19
vaccinations should be mandatory for workers.
Katie Brennan, an adviser for the Society for
Human Resource Management, said employers must consider their legal obligations
to employees under the federal Family and Medical Leave Act and the Americans
With Disabilities Act. With FMLA, eligible employees are entitled up to 12
weeks off, and state protections may also be in place, she said.
Beyond the legal guidelines, companies can
support and retain employees with long COVID-19 by providing flexibility and a
gradual return to work option. It’s crucial that people with long COVID-19
avoid returning to work without the adjustments they need to manage fatigue,
according to a guide by the Royal College of Occupational Therapists.
According to guidelines published by the
EU’s workplace safety
agency, “returning to work too soon or to a full workload can cause relapse.”
Some employees may feel guilty and find it hard to take a break when they need
to, the agency’s guidelines say. Encourage them to rest and recuperate, and
focus on asking about their health rather than when they will be returning.
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