Journal article
Changes in sick notes associated with COVID-19 from 2020 to 2022: a cohort study in 24 million primary care patients in OpenSAFELY-TPP
- Abstract:
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Objectives: Long-term sickness absence from employment has negative consequences for the economy and can lead to widened health inequalities. Sick notes (also called ‘fit notes’) are issued by general practitioners when a person cannot work for health reasons for more than 7 days. We quantified the sick note rate in people with evidence of COVID-19 in 2020, 2021 and 2022, as an indication of the burden for people recovering from COVID-19.
Design: Cohort study
Setting: With National Health Service (NHS) England approval, we used routine clinical data (primary care, hospital and COVID-19 testing records) within the OpenSAFELY-TPP database.Participants: People 18–64 years with a recorded positive test or diagnosis of COVID-19 in 2020 (n=365 421), 2021 (n=1 206 555) or 2022 (n=1 321 313); general population matched in age, sex and region in 2019 (n=3 140 326), 2020 (n=3 439 534), 2021 (n=4 571 469) and 2022 (n=4 818 870); people hospitalised with pneumonia in 2019 (n=29 673).
Primary outcome measure: Receipt of a sick note in primary care.
Results: Among people with a positive SARS-CoV-2 test or COVID-19 diagnosis, the sick note rate was 4.88 per 100 person-months (95% CI 4.83 to 4.93) in 2020, 2.66 (95% CI 2.64 to 2.67) in 2021 and 1.73 (95% CI 1.72 to 1.73) in 2022. Compared with the age, sex and region-matched general population, the adjusted HR for receipt of a sick note over the entire follow-up period (up to 10 months) was 4.07 (95% CI 4.02 to 4.12) in 2020 decreasing to 1.57 (95% CI 1.56 to 1.58) in 2022. The HR was highest in the first 30 days postdiagnosis in all years. Among people hospitalised with COVID-19, after adjustment, the sick note rate was lower than in people hospitalised with pneumonia.
Conclusions: Given the under-recording of postacute COVID-19-related symptoms, these findings contribute a valuable perspective on the long-term effects of COVID-19. Despite likely underestimation of the sick note rate, sick notes were issued more frequently to people with COVID-19 compared with those without, even in an era when most people are vaccinated. Most sick notes occurred in the first 30 days postdiagnosis, but the increased risk several months postdiagnosis may provide further evidence of the long-term impact.
- Publication status:
- Published
- Peer review status:
- Peer reviewed
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(Preview, Version of record, pdf, 957.6KB, Terms of use)
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- Publisher copy:
- 10.1136/bmjopen-2023-080600
Authors
- Funder identifier:
- https://ror.org/029chgv08
- Grant:
- 222097/Z/20/Z
- Funder identifier:
- https://ror.org/03x94j517
- Grant:
- MC_PC_20058
- Funder identifier:
- https://ror.org/001aqnf71
- Grant:
- MR/V015737/1
- MR/W016729/1
- MC_PC_20059
- MC_PC_20058
- Funder identifier:
- https://ror.org/0439y7842
- Grant:
- EP/S02428X/1
- Publisher:
- BMJ Publishing Group
- Journal:
- BMJ Open More from this journal
- Volume:
- 14
- Issue:
- 7
- Article number:
- e080600
- Place of publication:
- England
- Publication date:
- 2024-07-03
- Acceptance date:
- 2024-06-05
- DOI:
- EISSN:
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2044-6055
- Pmid:
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38960458
- Language:
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English
- Keywords:
- Pubs id:
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2012707
- Local pid:
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pubs:2012707
- Deposit date:
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2025-02-06
Terms of use
- Copyright holder:
- Schaffer et al
- Copyright date:
- 2024
- Rights statement:
- © Author(s) (or their employer(s)) 2024. Re-use permitted under CC BY. Published by BMJ. This is an open access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Unported (CC BY 4.0) license, which permits others to copy, redistribute, remix, transform and build upon this work for any purpose, provided the original work is properly cited, a link to the licence is given, and indication of whether changes were made. See: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
- Licence:
- CC Attribution (CC BY)
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