Functional impact of long COVID among healthcare workers with comorbidities in Quebec, Canada
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract Objectives Long COVID is a frequent post-infectious chronic condition that impacts quality of life and work performance. Whether individuals with comorbidities experience a greater functional impact of long COVID is unknown. We evaluated the functional impact of long COVID among healthcare workers (HCWs) with chronic cardiovascular diseases, chronic respiratory diseases, obesity, or a history of depression, and compared it with that of HCWs without comorbidities. Methods We conducted a cross-sectional study in Quebec, Canada. We compared self-reported long COVID cases to COVID-19-infected controls without long COVID on work ability, work functioning, health-related absenteeism, dyspnea-associated impairment, and psychological distress. We used inverse probability of exposure and robust Poisson regressions to estimate adjusted prevalence differences (aPD) and prevalence ratios. Comorbidity data were obtained from the Quebec integrated chronic disease surveillance system. Results A total of 3,754 and 8,439 HCWs with and without comorbidities, respectively, were included. Among HCWs with comorbidities, long COVID was associated with lower work ability, lower work functioning, more health-related long-term absenteeism, more dyspnea-associated impairment, and higher psychological distress (aPDs between 8% (95%CI: 5%-11%) for long-term absenteeism and 27% (95%CI: 22%-31%) for low work functioning). aPDs were greater among HCWs with comorbidities than among those without for low work ability (p=0.01 for interaction), for low work functioning (p=0.03), and for dyspnea-associated impairment (p<0.01). Conclusion Long COVID is associated with significant functional impairment among HCWs with pre-existing chronic conditions. What is already known on this topic People with comorbidities and those with long COVID both have affected work performance. What this study adds Long COVID is associated with a greater prevalence of low work ability, low work functioning, and dyspnea-associated impairment among workers with existing comorbidities than among those without. How this study might affect research, practice, or policy Public health, employers, and physicians should give particular attention to the specific needs of individuals affected by long COVID who already have comorbidities. There is a need for targeted occupational health policies to reduce the functional impact of long COVID among workers with comorbidities.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".