Information for Managing Employee Absences Due to COVID-19
By Susen Trail | 09/15/2020
As employees return to work and other social activities their chances of being exposed to someone with the virus increases. In order to manage staffing needs for your business it is important to have some idea of how long it will be until your employee is well enough to return to work. Most of the information we see about COVID-19 are reports on the number of fatalities and/or hospitalizations, but the large majority of cases, 99.9954%, remain at home.
While 90% of flu sufferer symptoms resolve (go away) in about 2 weeks after testing positive, a CDC study shows that only 65% of COVID-19 sufferers returned to their normal state of health within 2-3 weeks of having tested positive for SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. The study population was patients that remained at home for the duration of their illness.
The bottom line is that some employees will be out longer than 2 weeks if they are ill or are caring for someone ill. Depending on how they fit into your organization and/or if you have another employee that can be spared to take over their duties
When the patients tested positive for the virus, they had one or more of the following symptoms:
- Fatigue
- Cough
- Headache
- Body aches
- Fever
- Chills
- Loss of taste
- Loss of smell
- Diarrhea
- Congestion
- Dyspnea
- Nausea
- Sore throat
- Chest pain
- Abdominal pain
- Confusion
- Vomiting
This list is ranked by the number of patients reporting the symptom. For example, 71% reported fatigue and 61% of the patients reported cough. Page 997 of the study has a graph.
The study highlighted
|
Symptom |
% of Patients that had the symptom at time of testing |
% of those patients that still had the symptom at follow up |
|
Fatigue |
71% |
35% |
|
Cough |
61% |
43% |
|
Headache |
61% |
29% |
|
Shortness of Breath |
37% |
29% |
Patients reported having symptoms 2-7 days before testing which puts duration at time of follow up call between 16 and 28 days. Which means 35% of the study group were not ready to return to work nearly a month after the first symptoms started.
Study population
|
|
# in study |
% of group that still had one or more symptoms |
|
18-34 years old |
85 |
26% |
|
35-49 years old |
96 |
32% |
|
At or over 50 years old |
89 |
47% |
|
Women |
140 |
39% |
|
Men |
130 |
31% |
|
White |
94 |
38% |
|
Black |
46 |
57% |
|
Hispanic |
98 |
32% |
|
Insured |
210 |
36% |
|
Not insured |
46 |
33% |
|
No pre-existing cond. |
123 |
29% |
|
1 Pre-existing condition |
57 |
28% |
|
2 Pre-existing conditions |
39 |
54% |
|
3 or more Pre-existing conditions |
44 |
57% |
Pre-existing Conditions, also called Co-Morbidities
|
Remember a patient can have more than one condition |
# in study |
% of group that still had one or more symptoms |
|
Hypertension |
64 |
48% |
|
Obesity, BMI>30kg/m3 |
51 |
55% |
|
Psychiatric conditions |
49 |
53% |
|
Asthma |
36 |
36% |
|
Diabetes |
28 |
43% |
|
Immunosuppressed |
15 |
60% |
|
Autoimmune condition |
13 |
46% |
|
Blood disorder |
8 |
40% |
|
Chronic Kidney disease |
7 |
57% |
|
Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease |
7 |
43% |
|
Liver disease |
6 |
33% |
|
Neurologic condition |
6 |
50% |
|
Coronary artery disease |
4 |
25% |
|
Congestive heart failure |
2 |
0% |