Burden of Care of Long COVID Patients After Hospital Discharge

Since March 2020, 3.5 million people have been infected with SARS-COV2 in France, and about 250 000 patients have been hospitalized and successfully discharged. In a majority of cases, the evolution of the disease is favourable, but both hospitalized or patients with a mild form of the disease may present so called "Long-COVID" syndrome - a patient-created term which describes the effects of COVID-19 that continue for weeks or months beyond the initial symptoms. There is thus an urgent need to evaluate the long-term medical resource utilisation (MRU) and health care burden incurred by patients with Long-COVID, as well as risk factors for Long-COVID. We will use the SNDS database to extract and analyze the data relevant to the project objectives. Indeed, the SNDS database is the French NHS database providing individual anonymous information of primary and secondary care linked at individual level (data from PMSI, the French DRG-based medical information system). It currently covers more than 98% of the French population. For the first time, our study will provide an estimation of MRU and associated costs of hospitalized COVID-19 patients. It will also provide an estimation of the rate of long COVID forms developed by hospitalized COVID patients, as well as detailed MRU and costs incurred by long COVID patients compared to patients with non-long COVID-19.