AUTHOR=Moran Declan Patrick , Pires Sara Monteiro , Wyper Grant M. A. , Devleesschauwer Brecht , Cuschieri Sarah , Kabir Zubair 

TITLE=Estimating the Direct Disability-Adjusted Life Years Associated With SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) in the Republic of Ireland: The First Full Year

JOURNAL=International Journal of Public Health

VOLUME=67

YEAR=2022

URL=https://www.ssph-journal.org/journals/international-journal-of-public-health/articles/10.3389/ijph.2022.1604699

DOI=10.3389/ijph.2022.1604699

ISSN=1661-8564

ABSTRACT=<p><bold>Objectives:</bold> Burden of Disease frameworks facilitate estimation of the health impact of diseases to be translated into a single measure, such as the Disability-Adjusted-Life-Year (DALY).</p><p><bold>Methods:</bold> DALYs were calculated as the sum of Years of Life Lost (YLL) and Years Lived with Disability (YLD) directly associated with COVID-19 in the Republic of Ireland (RoI) from 01 March 2020, to 28 February 2021. Life expectancy is based on the Global Burden of Disease (GBD) Study life tables for 2019.</p><p><bold>Results:</bold> There were 220,273 confirmed cases with a total of 4,500 deaths as a direct result of COVID-19. DALYs were estimated to be 51,622.8 (95% Uncertainty Intervals [UI] 50,721.7, 52,435.8). Overall, YLL contributed to 98.5% of the DALYs. Of total symptomatic cases, 6.5% required hospitalisation and of those hospitalised 10.8% required intensive care unit treatment. COVID-19 was likely to be the second highest cause of death over our study’s duration.</p><p><bold>Conclusion:</bold> Estimating the burden of a disease at national level is useful for comparing its impact with other diseases in the population and across populations. This work sets out to standardise a COVID-19 BoD methodology framework for the RoI and comparable nations in the EU.</p>