Lowest-cost virus suppression

Analysis of policies for managing epidemics require simultaneously an economic and epidemiological perspective. We adopt a cost-of-policy framework to model both the virus spread and the cost of handling the pandemic. Because it is harder and more costly to fight the pandemic when the circulation is higher, we find that the optimal policy is to go to zero or near-zero case numbers. Without imported cases, if a region is willing to implement measures to prevent spread at one level in number of cases, it must also be willing to prevent the spread with at a lower level, since it will be cheaper to do so and has only positive other effects. With imported cases, if a region is not coordinating with other regions, we show the cheapest policy is continually low but nonzero cases due to decreasing cost of halting imported cases. When it is coordinating, zero is cost-optimal. Our analysis indicates that within Europe cooperation targeting a reduction of both within country transmission, and between country importation risk, should help achieve lower transmission and reduced costs.