Economic burden of the novel coronavirus infection: a systematic review

Abstract

Background. The sudden emergence and rapid spread of the novel coronavirus infection (COVID-19) caused tremendous burden on the health care system including the economic one. In this regard, many questions concerning the prioritization of funding for various restrictive and preventive procedures have arisen; also the introduction of various intervention methods for monitoring and timely treatment of post-COVID consequences became an urgent problem. These challenges actualized the development of pharmacoeconomic methods that improve the quality of decisions making in such extreme conditions.Objective: to systematize available studies on the assessment of the global economic burden of the novel coronavirus infection.Material and methods. A feature of the proposed review design was the highlighting of the observed shortcomings and areas in which scientists make additions to the assessment methods taking into account the chronology of the pandemic determining changes in the information field. Therefore, an analysis was made of 80 studies published in 2020–2022 and dedicated to the assessment and forecast of the global economic burden of COVID-19. The main inclusion criteria for the studies was the estimation of COVID-19 global burden. The search was carried out in PubMed/MEDLINE, Web of Science, Scopus, and eLibrary databases. Using a predefined data collection form, two reviewers independently extracted information characterizing the studies.Results. An analysis of the publications showed a fairly wide variety of studies in the field of the COVID-19 burden, including those determined by the difference in observation objects, analysis methods, factors taken into account, etc. Scientists actively use international (73.8%) and national (90%) databases, and surveys (57.5%). Predominantly, the estimates involve the calculation of quality-adjusted life years lost (QALY) (66.3%), 37.6% of the studies are based on the results of constructing scenario models, 28.8% consume algorithms of epidemiological SIR (susceptible, infected, or recovered) models, and 66.3% provide for cost assessment. As part of the estimated economic burden, the loss of productivity (26.3% of publications), the introduction of vaccination (32.5%), comorbidity (25%), post-COVID complications (17.5%) are considered.Conclusion. A significant interest of the world scientific community in assessing the COVID-19 global burden is observed, determined by the search for the most effective study methods. Further investigations in this area should focus on detailing within the estimated economic burden of losses associated with post-COVID-19 complications, including their various combinations, as well as on the analysis of the correlation and mutual compensation of effects from various types of treatment, with a deeper study of indirect losses. The results of this work will be also useful in conducting similar studies, including for determining their design and applying modern mathematical modeling tools.