Series

Long COVID: The health and economic impacts in Australia

We examine long COVID’s impact on our health, lives and livelihoods.

7 stories

Jackie Bos and the shed in which she lives.

Coronavirus pandemic

‘It can’t be ignored’: The illness costing Australia at least $5.7b a year

Jackie Bos can no longer work and is living in her sister’s shed. She is among thousands of Australians whose incomes have vanished as a result of long COVID.

April 24, 2023
Matt Wade, Anna Patty and Angus Thomson

Stephanie Watts has suffered from long COVID.

Stephenie could not get her legs to move in sync. Turns out it was long COVID

With a federal inquiry report soon due, we examine the impact long COVID is having on Australians’ lives and what its underlying causes might be.

Liam Mannix and Angus Thomson

Is there a fundamental problem with the definition of long COVID?

Australia’s leading long COVID researchers reveal they no longer view the condition as mysterious, undiagnosable and untreatable.

Liam Mannix and Angus Thomson

The search for long COVID treatments is already controversial

Madeline Cooper loved her job, running programs for children and young people at a non-profit. Long COVID took it all away from her.

Liam Mannix and Angus Thomson

Tom Andrews, who finished a PhD last year before suffering long COVID, says “brain fog” doesn’t come close to describing the cognitive impairment: “It’s more like an acquired brain injury.”

He’d finished a PhD. Then long COVID hit and he couldn’t make dinner

From Tom, an academic, to a once-athletic teen, crippled by fatigue – Australians with long COVID are still waiting on answers.

Fenella Souter

Doctors meet with a patient at the long COVID clinic in St Vincent’s Hospital in Sydney.

Database and more clinics needed to close a ‘diagnosis and treatment gulf’

A new report estimated between 2 and 20 per cent of people suffer long COVID. But there is no concrete data on how many Australians are affected by it, nor the most effective way to treat it.