Abstract
As a part of mitigation strategies during a COVID-19 pandemic, the WHO currently recommends social distancing measures through school closures (SC) and work closures (WC) to control the infection spread and reduce the illness attack rate. Focusing on the use of administrative and secondary data, this study aimed to estimate the costs and effects of alternative strategies for mitigating the COVID-19 pandemic in Jakarta, Indonesia, by comparing the baseline (no intervention) with SC + WC for 2, 4, and 8 weeks as respective scenarios. A modified Susceptible-Exposed-Infected-Recovered (SEIR) compartmental model accounting for the spread of infection during the latent period was applied by taking into account a 1-year time horizon. To estimate the total pandemic cost of all scenarios, we took into account the cost of healthcare, SC, and productivity loss due to WC and illness. Next to costs, averted deaths were considered as the effect measure. In comparison with the baseline, the result showed that total savings in scenarios of SC + WC for 2, 4, and 8 weeks would be approximately $24 billion, $25 billion, and $34 billion, respectively. In addition, increasing the duration of SC and WC would increase the number of averted deaths. Scenarios of SC + WC for 2, 4, and 8 weeks would result in approximately 159,075, 173,963, and 250,842 averted deaths, respectively. A sensitivity analysis showed that the wage per day, infectious period, basic reproduction number, incubation period, and case fatality rate were found to be the most influential parameters affecting the savings and number of averted deaths. It can be concluded that all the mitigation scenarios were considered to be cost-saving, and increasing the duration of SC and WC would increase both the savings and the number of averted deaths.
Highlights
Since the World Health Organization (WHO) upgraded the status of the novel coronavirus disease2019 (COVID-19) outbreak from epidemic to pandemic on 11 March 2020, the threat of this diseaseData 2020, 5, 98; doi:10.3390/data5040098 www.mdpi.com/journal/dataData 2020, 5, 98 has been a major public health concern all over the world [1]
As a part of the mitigation strategies used during the COVID-19 pandemic, the WHO currently recommends that social distancing through school closures (SC) and workplace closures (WC) are considered as frontline pandemic mitigation strategies to control infection spread and reduce the illness attack rate [2]
We followed the approach of Goh et al [7] and modified a Susceptible-Exposed-Infected-Recovered (SEIR) compartmental model accounting for the spread of COVID-19 infection during the latent period
Summary
Since the World Health Organization (WHO) upgraded the status of the novel coronavirus disease2019 (COVID-19) outbreak from epidemic to pandemic on 11 March 2020, the threat of this diseaseData 2020, 5, 98; doi:10.3390/data5040098 www.mdpi.com/journal/dataData 2020, 5, 98 has been a major public health concern all over the world [1]. Since the World Health Organization (WHO) upgraded the status of the novel coronavirus disease. The highest number of fatal cases was reported to be in Jakarta, the capital of Indonesia [3]. Following the WHO’s recommendations, the Jakarta administration decided to close all schools in the region from 15 March 2020. To support this policy, several institutions and companies have conducted a trial period of remote work for their employees. Several institutions and companies have conducted a trial period of remote work for their employees These policies would be reviewed at the end of the second week of implementation, depending on the development of the COVID-19 situation
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