Incidence and cost of COVID-19-related work absence based on social insurance data from Poland

BACKGROUND: COVID-19 pandemic and public health measures aimed at limiting the spread of the disease caused widespread work absence. This research aimed to identify the incidence of COVID-19-related short-term work absence and to estimate the cost associated with this absence. METHODS: The study used quarterly (Q) social insurance data from Poland (2020-2022). COVID-19-related absence was identified with four ICD-10 classification diagnoses: COVID-19; personal history of COVID-19; post-COVID-19 condition; and multisystem inflammatory syndrome associated with COVID-19. To identify work absence, the study relied on real-life, disease-specific data on the number of absence days from the Social Insurance Institution. Additionally, excess caregiving resulting from the pandemic was estimated based on all-cause caregiving days. To estimate the cost of work absence, the study relied on the human capital method. RESULTS: There were 15.2 million absence days resulting from four COVID-19-related diagnoses (2.1% of total all-cause absence days). Of these, COVID-19 caused 12.2 million absence days, followed by post-COVID-19 condition (2.9 million). Excess caregiving was a dominant pandemic-related work absence category, with 37.7 million work days lost. COVID-19 absence was concentrated in Q4-2020 and high in Q1-2021 and Q3-2022. On the other hand, the incidence of the remaining three diagnoses was the highest in Q1-2022. The total indirect cost of work absence was €4.3 billion, and 69.2% of this loss resulted from excess caregiving. For this cost category, 79.1% of costs were borne in Q2- and Q3-2020 when severe lockdowns were imposed. CONCLUSIONS: The estimates show that COVID-19-related short-term absenteeism was a significant public health burden and translated to severe economic losses. The economic loss from caregiving resulted in more burden than the COVID-19 health-related absence. KEY MESSAGES: • There were 52.9 million work absence days from the COVID-19 pandemic in Poland until the end of 2022, resulting in an indirect cost of €4.3 billion. • Most (∼70%) of the pandemic work absence and its cost resulted from caregiving responsibilities, which applied to care for the sick and children unable to attend educational facilities.