Risk of long COVID higher for people living in underprivileged areas: Study

New research led by the universities of Southampton and Oxford has found that the risk of long COVID is strongly associated with area-level deprivation, with the odds of having long COVID 46 percent higher for people from the most deprived areas, compared to those in the least deprived areas.

Published in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, the study analysed over 200,000 working-age adults and is the first to quantify the association between long COVID and socioeconomic status across a range of occupation sectors.

Analysing data from the Office for National Statistics COVID-19 Infection Survey, the researchers found that females had a higher risk of long COVID, with the risk of long COVID in females in the least deprived areas comparable to that in males in the most deprived areas.

People living in the most deprived areas and working in the healthcare and education sectors had the highest risk of long COVID compared to the least deprived areas. There was no significant association between the risk of long COVID and the most and least deprived areas for people working in the manufacturing and construction sectors.

According to the researchers, the study indicates the need for a diverse range of public health interventions after recovery from COVID-19 across multiple intersecting social dimensions.

Reference:

Socioeconomic inequalities of long COVID: a retrospective population-based cohort study in the United Kingdom,Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine,DOI 10.1177/01410768231168377