The analysis, based on what the report calls the largest database of private health insurance claims in the United States, found 78,252 patients who were diagnosed with code U09.9 of the International Classification of Diseases between October 1, 2021 and January. 31, 2022 and most of them were not hospitalized for their initial infection.
“This is generating a pandemic of people who were not hospitalized but ended up with this increased disability,” said Dr. Paddy Sentongo, assistant professor of infectious disease epidemiology at Penn State, who was not involved in the new study.
Dr Claire Steve, a clinical academician and physician at King’s College London who was not involved in the new study, said the total number of people diagnosed was “huge”, especially given that the study covered only the first four months after the diagnostic code was introduced and did not include people covered by government health programs such as Medicaid or Medicare (although it did include people on private Medicare Advantage plans). “It’s probably a drop in the ocean compared to the real number,” Dr. Steves said.
A study by FAIR Health, a non-profit organization that focuses on health care and insurance costs, found that for 76 percent of patients, the initial coronavirus infection did not make them sick enough to require hospitalization. However, months later, they experienced symptoms that were diagnosed as post-Covid conditions.
Another striking finding is that while two-thirds of patients had pre-existing health conditions in their medical records, nearly one-third did not, a much higher percentage than Dr. Ssentongo said he would have expected. “These are people who have been healthy and say to themselves, ‘Guys, there’s something wrong with me,'” he said.
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