Health
COVID modeling suggests how governments should respond to future variants and outbreaks
Future COVID-19 subspecies and outbreaks will be best managed through continued vaccination and a more rapid expansion of restrictions, according to new research.
Key Point:
- The study is the first of its kind to rank policies based on economic and health outcomes.
- The report’s lead author says the model points to the importance of stepping up health measures if more dangerous variants take hold.
- Modeling suggests thousands more COVID-related deaths to be recorded this year
Researchers at the University of Melbourne have modeled the health and economic impacts of over 100 different policy responses to a range of possible new outbreaks.
“What we generally found was that either slightly tighter public health and social measures or a lower threshold for slightly tighter restrictions averaged across these scenarios. Performance improvements,” said lead author Joshua Szanyi.
Researchers evaluated 104 different government responses, focusing on the severity of health measures, level of mask wearing, whether the government is providing respirator masks, and type of vaccination.
All policies were modeled against nine different future COVID-19 scenarios from last October (one with no major new variants of concern and eight other options with new variants). rice field.
It builds on previous research from universities that helped shape the government’s response. Including the way out of Melbourne’s 2020 lockdown.
According to Dr. Szanyi, what makes the modeling different from previous studies around the world is that the economic effects of policies were weighed against health outcomes such as deaths and hospital capacity. The long-term effects of his COVID were also factored into the model.
The findings were published today in the Lancet Regional Health — Western Pacific journal.
“The results also reinforce the importance of vaccination in the response to COVID-19,” said Dr. Szanyi.
The study found that increasing the number of patients over the age of 30 reduced hospitalizations by about 12% and deaths by about 27%.
Vaccination was found to be a cost-saving measure in all scenarios.
The report comes at a time of stagnating booster rates across Australia, with around 72% of the targeted population receiving the third dose and around 44% receiving the fourth dose.
The study also found that increased prevalence of respirator masks during outbreaks such as N95 has a modest impact on hospitalization and mortality rates.
Dr. Szanyi said that while there is strong evidence that masks help reduce transmission of the virus, “it may be too late to let things go after things get out of hand,” increasing mask use.
Large number of COVID-related deaths expected in most scenarios
The study is focused on Victoria and covers 12 months from October 2022.
A high number of infections and deaths is likely to occur regardless of policy or circumstances, with Victoria projected to have an average of 4.2 million infections and 8,100 deaths over the next 12 months.
Researchers ranked responses in four equally weighted categories: cost-effectiveness to the health system, cost-effectiveness in terms of GDP, number of deaths, and number of days above hospital occupancy thresholds. bottom.
Overall, the top combination is more stringent health measures, Encouraging an additional two doses of vaccination and mask wearing for those over 30, but not covered by government provision of respirator masks.
James Wood, professor of infectious diseases at UNSW, who was not involved in the study, peer-reviewed the paper in the journal and found that the researchers “did a really solid job on the health burden and cost-effectiveness” of the policy. said.
“[They] We’ve done some great work for a much longer time than COVID could contribute in terms of those burdens as well,” he said.
As a mathematician, Dr. Wood said he wanted to see the details in a paper on the agent model used.
But he said the “tremendous amount of work” put into the paper played a key role in starting a conversation about how to balance competing interests in a pandemic.
Most important health measures when ‘more dangerous’ variants occur, authors say
of Quarantine rules lifted in October It marks the end of nearly all COVID restrictions across the country, with leaders suggesting they are unlikely to return unless there is a dramatic need to bring them back.
UNSW’s Dr Wood said when the work was first done, “the extent to which non-vaccine, non-antiviral interventions would intervene in the COVID epidemic was an open question.” .
“I think the population has moved a lot between the middle of last year and the end of last year in terms of willingness to accept that kind of thing,” he said.
“But if a bad variant, or even worse, reappears, you’ll want to know what the tradeoffs are in terms of cost and so on.”
The report’s author, Dr. Szanyi, said the input of public health and social measures into the model was not necessarily lockdowns, but at some levels more like working from home.
But he said the model shows the importance of stepping up health measures.
“Even when we consider the economic impact of these decisions, we really understand the value of stepping up public health and social measures in these particular circumstances,” he said.
Last year was the first time Omicron, the strain that was dominant at the beginning of the year, remained the most common strain after 12 months.
For example, in Victoria, Ministry of Health data released today showed that “the recombinant strain XBF had the highest proportion of detections, followed by BQ.1/BQ.1.1 and BR.2”. I’m here.
The agency said “groups of variants that cannot be classified because of new mutations” accounted for 17% of the detected wastewater.
“At the moment, we are dealing with a subspecies of Omicron, but there is no guarantee that the virus will evolve to become more virulent, dangerous, or more capable of causing serious illness,” Dr. Szanyi said.
“So I think it’s important that people are aware of that fact and have realistic expectations of what happens around the corner.
“I hope it won’t. But there’s no guarantee it won’t.”
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