IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/arx/papers/2004.10324.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Managing COVID-19 Pandemic without Destructing the Economy

Author

Listed:
  • David Gershon
  • Alexander Lipton
  • Hagai Levine

Abstract

We analyze an approach to managing the COVID-19 pandemic without shutting down the economy while staying within the capacity of the healthcare system. We base our analysis on a detailed heterogeneous epidemiological model, which takes into account different population groups and phases of the disease, including incubation, infection period, hospitalization, and treatment in the intensive care unit (ICU). We model the healthcare capacity as the total number of hospital and ICU beds for the whole country. We calibrate the model parameters to data reported in several recent research papers. For high- and low-risk population groups, we calculate the number of total and intensive care hospitalizations, and deaths as functions of time. The main conclusion is that countries, which enforce reasonable hygienic measures on time can avoid lockdowns throughout the pandemic provided that the number of spare ICU beds per million is above the threshold of about 100. In countries where the total number of ICU beds is below this threshold, a limited period quarantine to specific high-risk groups of the population suffices. Furthermore, in the case of an inadequate capacity of the healthcare system, we incorporate a feedback loop and demonstrate that quantitative impact of the lack of ICU units on the death curve. In the case of inadequate ICU beds, full- and partial-quarantine scenarios outcomes are almost identical, making it unnecessary to shut down the whole economy. We conclude that only a limited-time quarantine of the high-risk group might be necessary, while the rest of the economy can remain operational.

Suggested Citation

  • David Gershon & Alexander Lipton & Hagai Levine, 2020. "Managing COVID-19 Pandemic without Destructing the Economy," Papers 2004.10324, arXiv.org, revised May 2020.
  • Handle: RePEc:arx:papers:2004.10324
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://arxiv.org/pdf/2004.10324
    File Function: Latest version
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Condon, Bradly John & Sinha, Tapen, 2010. "Who is that masked person: The use of face masks on Mexico City public transportation during the Influenza A (H1N1) outbreak," Health Policy, Elsevier, vol. 95(1), pages 50-56, April.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Blog mentions

    As found by EconAcademics.org, the blog aggregator for Economics research:
    1. 42. Selected Data of Coronavirus in Spain, United States, Europe, America and other areas, year 2020: Statistics of Cases and Hospital beds
      by MCG Blogs de Economía in Euro-American Association: World Development on 2020-05-12 09:25:00

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Chakwizira, James, 2022. "Stretching resilience and adaptive transport systems capacity in South Africa: Imperfect or perfect attempts at closing COVID -19 policy and planning emergent gaps," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 125(C), pages 127-150.
    2. Nano Prawoto & Eko Priyo Purnomo & Abitassha Az Zahra, 2020. "The Impacts of Covid-19 Pandemic on Socio-Economic Mobility in Indonesia," International Journal of Economics & Business Administration (IJEBA), International Journal of Economics & Business Administration (IJEBA), vol. 0(3), pages 57-71.
    3. John R. Birge & Ozan Candogan & Yiding Feng, 2022. "Controlling Epidemic Spread: Reducing Economic Losses with Targeted Closures," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 68(5), pages 3175-3195, May.
    4. Arielle Kaim & Tuvia Gering & Amiram Moshaiov & Bruria Adini, 2021. "Deciphering the COVID-19 Health Economic Dilemma (HED): A Scoping Review," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 18(18), pages 1-13, September.
    5. Yiduo Huang & Zuojun Max Shen, 2021. "Optimizing timetable and network reopen plans for public transportation networks during a COVID19-like pandemic," Papers 2109.03940, arXiv.org.
    6. Grass, D. & Wrzaczek, S. & Caulkins, J.P. & Feichtinger, G. & Hartl, R.F. & Kort, P.M. & Kuhn, M. & Prskawetz, A. & Sanchez-Romero, M. & Seidl, A., 2024. "Riding the waves from epidemic to endemic: Viral mutations, immunological change and policy responses," Theoretical Population Biology, Elsevier, vol. 156(C), pages 46-65.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Arielle Kaim & Eli Jaffe & Maya Siman-Tov & Ella Khairish & Bruria Adini, 2020. "Impact of a Brief Educational Intervention on Knowledge, Perceived Knowledge, Perceived Safety, and Resilience of the Public During COVID-19 Crisis," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 17(16), pages 1-14, August.
    2. Kelly R Moran & Sara Y Del Valle, 2016. "A Meta-Analysis of the Association between Gender and Protective Behaviors in Response to Respiratory Epidemics and Pandemics," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 11(10), pages 1-25, October.
    3. Jennifer L. Scheid & Shannon P. Lupien & Gregory S. Ford & Sarah L. West, 2020. "Commentary: Physiological and Psychological Impact of Face Mask Usage during the COVID-19 Pandemic," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 17(18), pages 1-12, September.
    4. Kaplan, Sigal & Tchetchik, Anat & Greenberg, Doron & Sapir, Itsik, 2022. "Transit use reduction following COVID-19: The effect of threat appraisal, proactive coping and institutional trust," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 159(C), pages 338-356.
    5. Alexander Lipton & Marcos Lopez de Prado, 2022. "Mitigation Strategies for COVID-19: Lessons from the K-SEIR Model Calibrated to the Observable Data," JRFM, MDPI, vol. 15(6), pages 1-38, June.
    6. Lixin Jiang & Erica L. Bettac & Hyun Jung Lee & Tahira M. Probst, 2022. "In Whom Do We Trust? A Multifoci Person-Centered Perspective on Institutional Trust during COVID-19," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 19(3), pages 1-20, February.
    7. Valerio Capraro & Hélène Barcelo, 2020. "The effect of messaging and gender on intentions to wear a face covering to slow down COVID-19 transmission," Journal of Behavioral Economics for Policy, Society for the Advancement of Behavioral Economics (SABE), vol. 4(S2), pages 45-55, December.
    8. Muhammad Irfan & Nadeem Akhtar & Munir Ahmad & Farrukh Shahzad & Rajvikram Madurai Elavarasan & Haitao Wu & Chuxiao Yang, 2021. "Assessing Public Willingness to Wear Face Masks during the COVID-19 Pandemic: Fresh Insights from the Theory of Planned Behavior," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 18(9), pages 1-22, April.
    9. Rachael M. Jones & Elodie Adida, 2013. "Selecting Nonpharmaceutical Interventions for Influenza," Risk Analysis, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 33(8), pages 1473-1488, August.

    More about this item

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:arx:papers:2004.10324. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: arXiv administrators (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://arxiv.org/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.