Losses of Life Expectancy and Productivity Associated with COVID-19 Pandemic in Canada: Policy Implication for Future Communicable Disease Control.

This research examines whether the Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) did harm to the population's health through comparing the changes in the life expectancy of Canadians with those of Australians over the period from March 2019 to February 2021 by using a difference-in-differences (DID) estimation method. We found that the pandemic did cause differences in life expectancies between Canada and Australia, probably because of different initial control policies for COVID-19. This study uses the indicator of disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) to measure the societal health burden, which was corroborated by estimating temporal productivity loss (TPL) and permanent productivity loss (PPL) based on the human capital approach (HCA) using data from Health Canada. The societal health burden in Canada amounted to 6.493 DALYs per 1000 male persons and 5.316 DALYs per 1000 female persons. The economy's permanent productivity loss was around USD 5.3 billion, while the temporary productivity loss was around USD 3 billion from February 2020 to April 2022. The sum of the above two losses amounted to 0.477% of the GDP in 2019. Swift and decisive decisions at the very early stage of a pandemic can nip contagions in the bud before numbers get out of hand and would be less damaging to people's health and the economy, as seen in Australia, in contrast to what happened in Canada. We thus recommend that such policies plus telecommunication systems in healthcare services be implemented early on to cope with the future outbreak of any emerging infectious diseases such as COVID-19.

The Determinants of Telehealth Provision: Empirical Evidence from OECD Countries.

Health services provided through the telecommunications system aim to improve the population's health and well-being. This research aims to explore what digital, economic, and health factors are associated with the provision of telehealth services, especially in ageing communities. Applying Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries' experiences, this research tries to construct a logistic regression model between adopting a telehealth system or not, a binary outcome variable, and a group of potentially explanatory variables. Estimation results showed that there were thresholds for telehealth provision: The demand for telehealth service usually began when the provision of telecommunication accessibility reached 50%, the proportion of elders exceeded 10%, or the proportion of health spending occupied more than 3-5% of the gross domestic product (GDP); the slope of each variable seemed to correspond with an increase in demand for such a provision. A growing number of individuals in OECD countries are now readily served by telehealth systems under the COVID-19 pandemic. These findings could be regarded as a model for other countries for implementing the necessary infrastructure early on when any of these parameters reaches its threshold. Moreover, telehealth applied in developing countries could be elevated for wider populations to access basic health services and for the remote delivery of health care. A rational decision could be made to appropriately use additional resources in telehealth provision. With accessible e-health services, the population's health could be improved, which in turn would possibly increase productivity and social welfare.