More and more longcovid patients incapacitated for work, ‘top of the iceberg’

This article was last updated on March 3, 2025

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More and more longcovid patients incapacitated for work, ‘top of the iceberg’

Five years after the first coronabes infection in the Netherlands, there are around 450,000 people who have contracted Long Covid. More than 12,000 of them have since been declared (partly) incapacitated for work, according to figures from the UWV. They have been sick for more than two years and now have a WIA benefit. Two years ago it was 3000 people.

But according to patient organizations, this is just the tip of the iceberg. According to patient organization Postcovid NL, there are 90,000 people with serious complaints in the Netherlands. Not everyone is eligible for a WIA benefit and there are also many patients returning to work. But reintegrating with a disease such as Long Covid is still a big struggle.

Relapse

In July 2021, Suzanne van de Nes fell ill. “After it ‘Dancing-with-Janssen weekend“Where my youngest daughter had gone.” For months she was very sick of Corona and it finally took years before she could return to work.

“My husband and I had a practice where we helped people who suffer from fixed muscle tension. During the Lockdowns it cost a lot of money and because I did not recover enough, we had to close the company in March 2023.”

After that it went slowly but surely better. She went to do volunteer work, started a process with a career coach and eventually started to apply. “Then I was hired as a social worker, for 24 hours a week. That went very well, until the end of October. Then I became very ill again, with corona complaints again.”

In the meantime, Van de Nes is re-integrating and works 15 to 18 hours a week.

“When we still had to get to know the disease, we tended to compare it to someone who is overstrained,” says Charlotte de Bruin, company doctor and internist-nephrologist at Arbo Unie in Nijmegen. “Then we advised to push and stretch the boundaries. But we noticed that the recovery was getting worse.”

“We now know you very gradually building And should not go beyond boundaries. Then it sometimes works, “says Iris Homeijer, company doctor and director of medical matters at HumanCapitalCare.” But it remains different from other diseases because we cannot give a prognosis. With Long Covid you can hardly say how long someone stays sick and whether someone gets a relapse. “

In recent years, Homeijer has accompanied around ten people with Long Covid. “A few of them have not returned to work at all. Those are very dire cases where people can do very little at home.”

No right to WIA

Charlotte Nelck fell ill in the summer of 2021. She was then Deputy Officer of Justice with a busy social life. After years of being sick and attempts to reintegrate, she heard a year ago that she had been completely rejected. She is now receiving a WIA benefit and is working as a volunteer at Patient Association Long Covid Nederland working with the theme.

“Many people with Long Covid do not end up in the WIA figures,” says Nelck. Sometimes people start working fewer hours without requesting benefits or people retire earlier. “And not everyone is entitled to a WIA benefit. Think of self-employed people who had no disability insurance.”

Even people who got sick before their working life started have no entitlement to the WIA. And the Wajong, which is intended for this young target group, has thresholds for longcovid patients. Only someone who, according to an insurance doctor, can never work again due to illness is entitled to it. “Insurance doctors don’t dare say that. That is a group of young, sick people who get into trouble enormously.”

The UWV says that there are indeed harrowing situations due to the strict rules and says to give young people as well as possible how they can continue if they are not entitled to a Wajong benefit.

Differences between company doctors

People who are busy with reintegration often depend on the knowledge of the company doctor they have, says Nelck. For example of knowledge About PEM complaints at Long Covid, the worsening of complaints due to effort. “This makes it so important to prevent overloading. If your company doctor has little knowledge about it, it will lead to poor advice and inequality.”

Joost van Bekum, company doctor of Arbo Unie in Eindhoven, says that the major differences in knowledge between company doctors are aligned over the years. “In the beginning nobody knew about Pem complaints, nowadays most occupational physicians know what that is.” Yet it remains a new disease that they do not understand. “We are still discovering new things.”

The UWV expects the number of long-covid patients who end up in the WIA in the coming years, because by no means everyone who is now sick will actually be able to return to work.