Balancing economic and epidemiological interventions in the early stages of pathogen emergence

Andy Dobson, Cristiano Ricci, Raouf Boucekkine, Fausto Gozzi, Giorgio Fabbri, Ted Loch-Temzelides, Mercedes Pascual

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

8 Scopus citations

Abstract

The global pandemic of COVID-19 has underlined the need for more coordinated responses to emergent pathogens. These responses need to balance epidemic control in ways that concomitantly minimize hospitalizations and economic damages. We develop a hybrid economic-epidemiological modeling framework that allows us to examine the interaction between economic and health impacts over the first period of pathogen emergence when lockdown, testing, and isolation are the only means of containing the epidemic. This operational mathematical setting allows us to determine the optimal policy interventions under a variety of scenarios that might prevail in the first period of a large-scale epidemic outbreak. Combining testing with isolation emerges as a more effective policy than lockdowns, substantially reducing deaths and the number of infected hosts, at lower economic cost. If a lockdown is put in place early in the course of the epidemic, it always dominates the "laissez-faire"policy of doing nothing.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Article numbereade6169
JournalScience Advances
Volume9
Issue number21
DOIs
StatePublished - May 2023

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

  • General

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