Analysis of the Tradeoff Between Health and Economic Impacts of the Covid-19 Epidemic

Bibliographic Data

ID22079259
AuthorsSamson Lasaulce (0000-0001-9837-9538, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique), Chao Zhang (0000-0003-3686-4743, Central South University, corresponding author), Vineeth S Varma (0000-0001-8762-2790, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique), Vineeth Varma, Irinel‐Constantin Morărescu (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique), Irinel Constantin Morarescu
Year2021
Volume9
Pages620770-620770
Publication date2021-03-05
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueFrontiers in Public Health (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 2296-2565 • E-ISSN: 2296-2565
PublisherFrontiers Media SA (PUBLISHER • CH)
DOI10.3389/fpubh.2021.620770
PMID33748065
OpenAlexW3135001561
LanguageEN
Citations received6
References cited22

Various measures have been taken in different countries to mitigate the Covid-19 epidemic. But, throughout the world, many citizens don't understand well how these measures are taken and even question the decisions taken by their government. Should the measures be more (or less) restrictive? Are they taken for a too long (or too short) period of time? To provide some quantitative elements of response to these questions, we consider the well-known SEIR model for the Covid-19 epidemic propagation and propose a pragmatic model of the government decision-making operation. Although simple and obviously improvable, the proposed model allows us to study the tradeoff between health and economic aspects in a pragmatic and insightful way. Assuming a given number of phases for the epidemic (namely, 4 in this paper) and a desired tradeoff between health and economic aspects, it is then possible to determine the optimal duration of each phase and the optimal severity level (i.e., the target transmission rate) for each of them. The numerical analysis is performed for the case of France but the adopted approach can be applied to any country. One of the takeaway messages of this analysis is that being able to implement the optimal 4−phase epidemic management strategy in France would have led to 1.05 million of infected people and a GDP loss of 231 billions € instead of 6.88 millions of infected and a loss of 241 billions €. This indicates that, seen from the proposed model perspective, the effectively implemented epidemic management strategy is good economically, whereas substantial improvements might have been obtained in terms of health impact. Our analysis indicates that the lockdown/severe phase should have been more severe but shorter, and the adjustment phase occurred earlier. Due to the natural tendency of people to deviate from the official rules, updating measures every month over the whole epidemic episode seems to be more appropriate

2019-20 coronavirus outbreak · Betacoronavirus · Data science · Disease · Environmental health · Outbreak · Pandemic · Computer Science · COVID-19 Pandemic Impacts · Medicine · Virology

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