ArticlePloS one2021
Health and economic costs of early and delayed suppression and the unmitigated spread of COVID-19: The case of Australia.
Article in PloS one, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 17 papers.
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Who cites it
17 citing papers in PubMed.
- Optimizing infectious disease mitigation under dynamic conditions.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026Article
- Mechanics of pandemics.EClinicalMedicine · 2026Review
- The role of economic evaluation in modelling public health and social measures for pandemic policy: a systematic review.Cost effectiveness and resource allocation : C/E · 2024Article
- The effectiveness of COVID deaths to COVID policies: A robust conditional approach.Economic analysis and policy · 2023Article
- Proactive vs. reactive country responses to the COVID-19 pandemic shock.PLOS global public health · 2023Article
- Rapid review and commentary on the clinical implications of the population mental health consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic in Australia.Australasian psychiatry : bulletin of Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists · 2022Review
- A general framework for optimising cost-effectiveness of pandemic response under partial intervention measures.Scientific reports · 2022Article
- Economic Considerations in COVID-19 Vaccine Hesitancy and Refusal: A Survey of the Literature.The Economic record · 2022Article
- Optimizing Strategies for Improving Mental Health in Victoria, Australia during the COVID-19 Era: A System Dynamics Modelling Study.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2022Article
- Modelling the potential acute and post-acute burden of COVID-19 under the Australian border re-opening plan.BMC public health · 2022Article
- Sound Decision Making in Uncertain Times: Can Systems Modelling Be Useful for Informing Policy and Planning for Suicide Prevention?International journal of environmental research and public health · 2022Article
- Protocol for SARS-CoV-2 post-vaccine surveillance study in Australian adults and children with cancer: an observational study of safety and serological and immunological response to SARS-CoV-2 vaccination (SerOzNET).BMC infectious diseases · 2022Article
- What vaccination rate(s) minimize total societal costs after 'opening up' to COVID-19? Age-structured SIRM results for the Delta variant in Australia (New South Wales, Victoria and Western Australia).PLOS global public health · 2022Article
- Spatio-temporal evolution of the COVID-19 across African countries.Frontiers in public health · 2022Article
- Article
- Stark choices: exploring health sector costs of policy responses to COVID-19 in low-income and middle-income countries.BMJ global health · 2021Article
- Modelling the Spread of the Coronavirus: A View from Economics.The Australian economic review · 2021Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
5 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
We compare the health and economic costs of early and delayed mandated suppression and the unmitigated spread of 'first-wave' COVID-19 infections in Australia in 2020. Using a fit-for-purpose SIQRM-compartment model for susceptible, infected, quarantined, recovered and mortalities on active cases, that we fitted from recorded data, a value of a statistical life year (VSLY) and an age-adjusted value of statistical life (A-VSL), we find that the economic costs of unmitigated suppression are multiples more than for early mandated suppression. We also find that using an equivalent VSLY welfare loss from fatalities to estimated GDP losses, drawn from survey data and our own estimates of the impact of suppression measures on the economy, means that for early suppression not to be the preferred strategy requires that Australia would have to incur more than 12,500-30,000 deaths, depending on the fatality rate with unmitigated spread, to the economy costs of early mandated suppression. We also find that early rather than delayed mandated suppression imposes much lower economy and health costs and conclude that in high-income countries, like Australia, a 'go early, go hard' strategy to suppress COVID-19 results in the lowest estimated public health and economy costs.
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