New AI study suggests long Covid cases are significantly higher than official estimates

A new study led by the Mass General Brigham health system, published in JAMA Network Open, utilized an artificial intelligence algorithm to analyze medical records of nearly 460,000 patients across 58 U.S. hospitals. The researchers found that approximately 16% of patients, or about one in six, developed long Covid symptoms. These results indicate that the actual number of affected individuals could be over 18 million in the United States, which is double current estimates. The study highlights that existing diagnostic codes capture less than 7% of long Covid cases. Consequently, more than 10 million patients are currently not being tracked by official health surveillance systems. Furthermore, the analysis revealed that 14.5% of patients developed chronic conditions requiring ongoing medical care following a Covid-19 infection. Lead author Hossein Estiri stated that these findings likely represent an underestimation of the true burden of the disease.