On Pandemic Preparedness: How Well is the Modeling Community Prepared for COVID-19?
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COMMENTARY
On Pandemic Preparedness: How Well is the Modeling Community Prepared for COVID‑19? Kamal Desai1 · Eric Druyts1 · Kevin Yan1,2 · Chakrapani Balijepalli1 Published online: 14 September 2020 © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020
1 Background Since the outbreak of SARS-CoV-2, the number of globally confirmed cases of COVID-19 has surpassed 20 million while reported deaths now exceed 750,000 [1]. In the absence of effective vaccines, authorities have implemented various forms of social distancing, including travel bans, restrictions on gatherings, school closures, and confinement, guided in part by epidemiological models [2–6]. The pandemic has economic and social impacts felt beyond the health sector alone. Consumer retail, tourism, and travel are sectors that have been hard hit. Furthermore, social inequalities, which result in differential exposure to the virus and its consequences, cause some groups to be more affected and interventions less effective [7, 8]. For instance, lower socioeconomic groups or residents of long-term care facilities may have increased frailty, not be able to practice social distancing, or are more vulnerable to economic downturns. Meanwhile, the proliferation of epidemiological models assessing the effectiveness of social distancing and confinement strategies on cases and deaths has generally overlooked the inter-relationship with economic outcomes and social inequalities [2–6, 9, 10]. To comprehensively understand the impact of COVID-19, it is important to assess the economic, social, and health consequences, particularly as public health responses influence social and economic consequences felt beyond the health sector. Such analyses are needed for situational awareness to inform policy decisions and to better communicate them to the public. In this context, we ask whether the epidemiology and health economics modeling communities are prepared to * Kamal Desai [email protected] 1
Pharmalytics Group, 422 Richards Street, Suite 170, Vancouver, BC V6B 2Z4, Canada
Faculty of Medicine, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada
2
address the myriad of questions pertaining to the cost effectiveness of therapies or the effectiveness of public health interventions in a manner that incorporates economic and social dimensions associated with COVID-19. Some question types may be readily addressed with current economic evaluation methods, such as what is the cost effectiveness of adopting antiviral agents for hospitalized patients relative to current practices, while others may not, such as what are the costs and consequences to society across all sectors of re-opening specific segments of society or the economy compared to maintaining the status quo? However, several inter-related issues limit the conduct of an economic evaluation for a public health emergency of the type and magnitude of COVID-19. These issues relate to the multi-sector societal perspective needed for the analysis, the measurement of costs and effects, healthcare capacity constraints
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