Using an agent-based model to simulate long-term mental health and labour market outcomes associated with Post-Covid Conditions among the Canadian working population.

Most individuals who are infected with COVID-19 recover quickly, however for 1 in 6, symptoms including fatigue, shortness of breath and 'brain fog' can develop or persist for 3 months or longer after their initial infection. This condition is commonly referred to as long COVID and is estimated to have affected around 1.4 million Canadians. For those who experience long COVID, the effects can be debilitating, impacting ability to work, which can lead to long periods of absence, need for work accommodations or even job loss. Those with long COVID also commonly experience symptoms of poor mental health including anxiety and depression, which can be an additional cause or a consequence of inability to work. As a result, long COVID can have important social and economic impacts on the publicly-funded mental healthcare system and the Canadian workforce. This project aims to estimate the long-term impact of long COVID on employment and mental health outcomes to inform healthcare and economic policy and planning. Since the evidence on long COVID is rapidly emerging, the first step of this project is to collect and summarize evidence regarding the impact of long COVID on mental health and employment. The second step of this project is to use a simulation approach to predict the long-term impacts of long COVID on population-level mental health (eg cases of depression and anxiety, access to publicly funded mental health services, cost of mental healthcare), and employment (eg days of work lost and unemployment) outcomes 5 years from now. Finally, we will use this simulation technique to estimate the change in mental health and employment outcomes in the presence of specific interventions that are designed to promote recovery among those with long COVID. The findings of this project will help us to quantify the impact of long COVID and potentially identify effective interventions to lessen this impact, which will help inform healthcare and economic planning in Canada.