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The pandemic’s true health cost: how much of our lives has COVID stolen?

Researchers are trying to calculate how many years have been lost to disability and death.
  1. Holly Else
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A woman wearing a mask with tubes for oxygen sorts many containers of medicines for COVID-19 recovery arranged on a table

Millions of people are living with lasting effects of COVID-19. Credit: Mark Mirko/Hartford Courant/Tribune News Service/Getty

How do you count the cost of a pandemic? COVID-19 has killed an estimated 15 million people since it emerged at the end of 2019, but its impact on health reaches much further. For hundreds of millions of people around the world, infection with the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 has brought a range of problems, from the acute effects of the illness to the lasting symptoms known as long COVID.

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Nature 605, 410-413 (2022)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-022-01341-7

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