Comparing Disaster Costs with the Long-term Economic Impact of Chronic Illness Stemming from COVID-19 in Germany

Disasters associated with natural hazards often coincide with other types of threats and risks including health emergencies resulting in compounding impacts in a multi-hazard context. In Germany as well as many countries, the co-occurrence of the COVID-19 pandemic and disaster events has posed a complex challenge in recent years, testing its capacity for crisis management and long-term resilience. While disasters associated with natural hazards resulted in immediate and visible costs such as structural damage, expenditures for emergency response and economic disruptions, the COVID-19 pandemic also introduced ongoing economic impacts arising from long-term post-viral conditions such as Long COVID and Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (ME/CFS).

Using data from 2020 to 2024, this analysis compares direct disaster-related costs with the national burden of Long COVID and ME/CFS in Germany. Disaster events and direct disaster-related costs for Germany were extracted from various data and information sources, including CATDAT, scientific literature, reports, official press releases, and news reports. Among these events, the July 2021 flood, which occurred during the COVID-19 pandemic, caused severe damage to buildings, infrastructure, and industry, with a direct and indirect economic impact of more than 40 billion euros across various sectors.

On top of that, the COVID-19 pandemic resulted in tens of millions of infections per year causing growing numbers of citizens affected by post-viral conditions, namely Long COVID and ME/CFS, with increasing economic, medical and social costs for German society. These costs are currently being modelled in a collaborative project whose aim is to shape public policy towards improving outcomes for Long COVID and ME/CFS patients, communities, and society at large. The modelling effort encompasses the progression of Long COVID and ME/CFS cases over time within the German population and different economic costing methods. Initial modelling results indicate that the economic costs of Long COVID and ME/CFS amount to several tens of billion euros per year per type, reflecting the significant burden these chronic illnesses place on healthcare systems, workforce productivity, and social welfare programs.

Preliminary findings of the comparison show that while disasters associated with natural hazards incurred significant one-time costs, the long-term economic burden of Long COVID and ME/CFS is in the same order of magnitude or even surpasses these figures over the years due to the sustained impact on labor markets and healthcare systems. This emphasizes the need for policy making such as increases in funding for basic and clinical research into Long COVID and ME/CFS as well as new therapeutic approaches and health care infrastructures. The results for Germany complement existing work done in other countries such as Australia examining the costs.

The integrated and multi-hazard nature of disasters across natural, biological, conflict and other man-made disasters needs to be accounted for adequate policy planning in the disaster and loss space which integrates well with work within the MYRIAD-EU project on multi-hazard and multi-risk scenarios across different sectors.