Impact of age-selective vs non-selective physical-distancing measures against coronavirus disease 2019: a mathematical modelling study.
Int J Epidemiol
; 50(4): 1114-1123, 2021 08 30.
Article
in English
| MEDLINE | ID: covidwho-1132506
ABSTRACT
BACKGROUND:
There is a real possibility of successive COVID-19-epidemic waves with devastating consequences. In this context, it has become mandatory to design age-selective measures aimed at achieving an optimal balance between protecting public health and maintaining a viable economic activity.METHODS:
We programmed a Susceptible, Exposed, Infected, Removed (SEIR) model in order to introduce epidemiologically relevant age classes into the outbreak-dynamics analysis. The model was fitted to the official death toll and calculated age distribution of deaths in Wuhan using a constrained linear least-squares algorithm. Subsequently, we used synthetic location-specific and age-structured contact matrices to quantify the effect of age-selective interventions both on mortality and on economic activity in Wuhan. For this purpose, we simulated four different scenarios ranging from an absence of measures to age-selective interventions with stronger physical-distancing measures for older individuals.RESULTS:
An age-selective strategy could reduce the death toll by >30% compared with the non-selective measures applied during Wuhan's lockdown for the same workforce. Moreover, an alternative age-selective strategy could allow a 5-fold increase in the population working on site without a detrimental impact on the death toll compared with the Wuhan scenario.CONCLUSION:
Our results suggest that age-selective-distancing measures focused on the older population could have achieved a better balance between COVID-19 mortality and economic activity during the first COVID-19 outbreak in Wuhan. However, the implications of this need to be interpreted along with considerations of the practical feasibility and potential wider benefits and drawbacks of such a strategy.Keywords
Full text:
Available
Collection:
International databases
Database:
MEDLINE
Main subject:
COVID-19
Type of study:
Experimental Studies
Limits:
Humans
Language:
English
Journal:
Int J Epidemiol
Year:
2021
Document Type:
Article
Affiliation country:
Ije
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