Assessing economic losses with COVID-19 integrated models: a retrospective analysis

The COVID-19 pandemic led to a global crisis that forced governments to implement restrictive measures to control the spread of the disease. Although these restrictions, such as community quarantines, played a pivotal role in stabilizing healthcare systems, they also caused forced closures of various economic sectors that resulted in huge societal costs and severely impacted the marginalized. In order to understand and quantify the economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic in the Philippines, an integrated modeling approach, which combined an epidemiological compartmental model and an economic model, was utilized. The evolving nature of COVID-19 required continuous updating of the integrated model which this paper illustrates by applying three versions of the model in three different phases of the pandemic. Scenario-based estimates of active COVID-19 cases and economic losses, expressed in terms of foregone income, are produced for each of the model versions. Analysis of the results provided a retrospective view of the losses the economy had incurred during the pandemic, along with implications for public policy. The insights presented in this paper emphasize the importance of using an integrated modeling approach to guide pandemic response.