Long COVID
A large, poorly measured chronic illness burden left behind by the pandemic.
Severity score
36.6
Serious · default weighting
Trajectory
Steady
What this is
Tens of millions of people report persistent symptoms after COVID-19 infection, including fatigue, cognitive impairment and cardiovascular effects. Diagnosis is inconsistent, treatment is largely absent, and labour force effects are visible in several economies.
Score breakdown
Loss of life
20Direct and attributable mortality, normalised across annual and cumulative tolls.
Lives negatively impacted
68People displaced, injured, food-insecure, exposed or otherwise materially harmed.
Financial cost
54Direct damage, lost output and health-system spend attributable to the event.
Environmental impact
1Emissions, habitat and biodiversity loss, contamination and irreversibility.
Trajectory
26Whether the situation is escalating, and how much worse it is plausibly getting.