Long covid may drive up claims, actuaries predict

Workers’ compensation claims are probably going to rise amid growing evidence that a fraction of the community who has caught covid are displaying long-term health complications, the Actuaries Institute says in a new research paper released today.

The paper, How Covid-19 has affected Mortality and Morbidity in 2020 and 2021, anticipates the claims impact, and also the possibility of higher premiums, will be felt across all types of disability-related insurance.

Disability insurance includes workers’ compensation, income protection as well as group total and permanent disability.

“It is too early to say what the long-term impact will be, but we need to be ready,” Jennifer Lang, a member of the institute’s Covid-19 Mortality Working Group that prepared the paper, said.

“There are more people who are long-term disabled than there were before covid.”

The paper says long covid will require better healthcare for long term illness, such as investment in more health care workers, long covid clinics, and other support in the health care system.

Australia will also need to look into income support for those who are unable to work or who have reduced ability to work because of long covid as well as provide support in the workplace so that affected workers can continue to work while still suffering from the effects of contracting the virus.

Ms Lang says the institute has not yet estimated the size or probability of insurance claims from long covid but tells insuranceNEWS.com.au long-term health complications associated with getting infected are “likely to lead to a material increase in the level of disability in the community”.

“The implications for workers’ compensation will be dependent on whether there is a link to the person’s employment as the cause of the covid infection,” Ms Lang said.

The paper says the future of life with the virus includes long covid, for which more studies are emerging.

“However, this is still a poorly understood condition, and it is hard to form a clear prognosis,” the paper says.

“This means that, so long as people continue to contract covid-19, a fraction of them will develop long covid.

“While this may not have been a significant national issue in Australia when cases were low, the extensive spread of covid-19 will generate large numbers of long covid cases, with significant implications for both the health system and the economy.”

Click here for the paper.