Optimal shutdown strategies for COVID-19 with economic and mortality costs: British Columbia as a case study.
| Autor: | Barlow MT; Department of Mathematics, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada V6T 1Z2., Marshall ND; Department of Mathematics and Statistics, McGill University, 805 Sherbrooke Street West, Montreal, Quebec, Canada H3A 0B9., Tyson RC; CMPS Department, University of British Columbia Okanagan, 1177 Research Road, Kelowna, British Columbia, Canada V1V 1V7. |
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| Jazyk: | angličtina |
| Zdroj: | Royal Society open science [R Soc Open Sci] 2021 Sep 08; Vol. 8 (9), pp. 202255. Date of Electronic Publication: 2021 Sep 08 (Print Publication: 2021). |
| DOI: | 10.1098/rsos.202255 |
| Abstrakt: | Decision makers with the responsibility of managing policy for the COVID-19 epidemic have faced difficult choices in balancing the competing claims of saving lives and the high economic cost of shutdowns. In this paper, we formulate a model with both epidemiological and economic content to assist this decision-making process. We consider two ways to handle the balance between economic costs and deaths. First, we use the statistical value of life, which in Canada is about C$7 million, to optimize over a single variable, which is the sum of the economic cost and the value of lives lost. Our second method is to calculate the Pareto optimal front when we look at the two variables-deaths and economic costs. In both cases we find that, for most parameter values, the optimal policy is to adopt an initial shutdown level which reduces the reproduction number of the epidemic to close to 1. This level is then reduced once a vaccination programme is underway. Our model also indicates that an oscillating policy of strict and mild shutdowns is less effective than a policy which maintains a moderate shutdown level. (© 2021 The Authors.) |
| Databáze: | MEDLINE |
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