At a White House event in July, President Biden said that Americans with a disabling long COVID-related condition may be eligible to receive federal disability protections such as healthcare, housing, and unemployment benefits. Unfortunately, many Americans have been unable to qualify for those resources. 

Frustrated Patients

Since she tested positive for the coronavirus in April 2020, Josie Cabrera Taveras has been sleeping for up to 15 hours a day, stopping to catch her breath while grocery shopping, intermittently losing consciousness, and unable to maintain her job as a nanny.

Like many others who may have long COVID, Taveras, 31, is having a hard time proving the cause of her symptoms or that she has the symptoms at all. So far, she has had two brain MRIs, two stomach endoscopies, and multiple heart ultrasounds, lung X-rays, and CT scans, all yielding normal results. With no direct medical evidence of her condition or even that she had COVID, her disability coverage application has been rejected twice. 

Adding to patients’ frustration is that, due to the pandemic, the Social Security Administration (SSA) had to shut down in-person services, creating a substantial backlog and long wait times. Many cases are still pending, and wait times can last five months or more.

How Is Eligibility Determined?

According to the SSA, since December 2020, about 16,000 applicants have been able to provide medical evidence of COVID-19-related conditions. Disability benefits average about $1,280 a month. In order to qualify, applicants must:

• Demonstrate a disability that substantially limits their ability to work AND 
• Provide documentation that it has lasted, or is likely to last, for a year or more 

The SSA typically relies on medical assessments or health records to determine applicant eligibility. 

Possibilities for Success

Despite the difficulty of qualification, some people with long-COVID symptoms have applied successfully, even without a positive coronavirus test. Steven Trompeter, 49, was unable to perform his duties as an industrial mechanic after developing COVID symptoms that included cough, fever, muscle aches, and loss of taste and smell, in February 2020. He applied for disability in December 2020 and was approved six months later.

A spokesperson for the SSA said that determining qualification has more to do with how a person’s symptoms affect their ability to function than with receiving a specific diagnosis. “No two cases are the same, each case is individual,” she said. “We look at doctor’s tests, medical records, past treatments, and whether they have other conditions.”

Trompeter believes that the extensive medical records documenting his past health, and his repeated visits to a VA clinic throughout 2020, helped demonstrate that his lingering brain fog and other symptoms had become disabling over time. 

An Ongoing Issue

While the successes are encouraging, millions of Americans continue to suffer lingering symptoms and dwindling financial resources. Linking possible long-COVID symptoms back to a virus that is not present in the body continues to be troublesome. Dr. Stephen Martin, a physician, and professor at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, said that the complexity of diagnosing long COVID requires the input of various specialists. 

Coordinating them is a challenge, he explained, as many are overbooked, with waitlists of six months or more, particularly for patients without good health insurance. “This really hits us in our Achilles’ heel of healthcare,” Martin said. “The American healthcare system really isn’t set up to do this at scale.”

*Morris, A. (Another Struggle for Long Covid Patients: Disability Benefits. The New York Times.https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/27/us/long-covid-disability-benefits.html 

Much about the novel coronavirus, i.e., COVID-19, is still not fully understood. As research progresses and our knowledge of the virus increases, information can change rapidly. We strive to update all of our articles as quickly as possible, but there may occasionally be some lag between scientific developments and our revisions.