CANBERRA, Aug. 19 (Xinhua) -- Long COVID costed the Australian economy billions of dollars in 2022, new research has found.

The research, which was published on Monday, estimated that Australian workers living with long COVID cost the economy 9.6 billion Australian dollars (6.4 billion U.S. dollars) in lost productivity.

Using a mathematical model, researchers from the Australian National University (ANU), University of Melbourne and University of New South Wales (UNSW) Sydney estimated that there were 1.3 million Australians living with long COVID in September 2022, including 55,000 children aged four and under.

Quentin Grafton, an economist and co-author of the study from ANU, said that there were approximately 100 million lost hours of labor in Australia in 2022 due to workers experiencing ongoing COVID symptoms months after their initial diagnosis.

"This is equivalent to an average loss of eight hours per employed person, per year, including both full-time and part-time employment," he said in a media release.

"We estimate this equates to economy-wide losses, on average, of about 9.6 billion AUD in 2022, or one-quarter of Australia's real gross domestic product growth that year."

According to the study, workers aged 30-49 accounted for more than 50 percent of the total labor hours and productivity lost in 2022 due to long pandemic.

Grafton said that the research likely underestimates the economic impact of long COVID because it does not account for the lost productivity of healthy workers caring for others with long COVID.

The researchers used the findings to call for governments and policymakers to place a greater emphasis on long COVID as a public health priority.

They estimated that by December, 2024 up to 873,000 Australians will still be living with long COVID a year after their initial infection.

Photo from Canberra Daily