Background: From the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, clinical practice and research, globally, have centered on prevention of transmission and treatment of the disease. The pandemic has had a huge impact on the global economy and stressed the health care systems worldwide.
Methods: The present study estimates Disability-Adjusted Life Years (DALYs), Years of Potential Productive Life Lost (YPPLL) and Cost of Productivity Lost (CPL) due to premature mortality and absenteeism, secondary to COVID-19 in Kerala state, India. Details on sociodemography, incidence, death, quarantine, per capita income etc were dervived from various public sources. 5-year age-gender population, working population in each age-gender cohort and corresponding life expectancies were obtained from Census of India 2011. Data on incidence and recovery time were dervied from CODD-K. Details of deaths were extracted from government sources and CODD-K. The impact of disease on various age-gender cohorts has been analyzed. Sensitivity Analysis has been conducted by adjusting six variables with a total of 21 scenarios.
Results: Severity of infection and mortality were higher among older sub-group of patients, and male were more susceptible than female in most of the age groups. DALYs for the baseline scenario was 15,924.24 and 8,669.32 for male and female respectively. Total YPPLL for male and female cohorts were estimated to be 1323.57 and 612.31 respectively. People of 40-49 years age constituted 51.34% and 41.76% of the total CPL values (for premature mortality) of males and females respectively.
Conclusion: Most of the disease burden from COVID-19 was contributed by YLL. Losses due to YPPLL was reduced as the impact of COVID-19 infection was relatively lesser among the productive age groups. CPL values for people aged from 40-49 years were the highest. These estimates put emphasis that the decision-makers should focus and make efforts on reducing the economic burden for the longer impact of COVID-19 in Kerala state.