BALANCE

Balancing the epidemiological and societal impacts of pandemic control policies in the Netherlands

The mobility of people within and between regions plays an important role in the geographic spread of infectious diseases, making interventions aimed at reducing mobility (e.g., closure of businesses, working from home, reduced public transport) obvious policy options for pandemic control. However, OVV (2023) recently concluded that the Dutch lockdown policies during COVID-19 took (too) large economic tolls and that, in view of future pandemics, options should be explored for differentiating policies, striking a better balance between health impacts and other broader societal impacts (e.g., loss of productivity, income, and mental wellbeing). However, an open question is whether policies are best implemented nationally or regionally, and how their health- and broader societal impacts vary by groups of different security of livelihood.

Building on previous epidemiological modelling research comparing the impact of national and regional pandemic control strategies, the BALANCE project investigates the trade-off between the epidemiological and societal impacts of pandemic control interventions in the Netherlands, explicitly accounting for vulnerable groups in terms of security of livelihood. The study focuses on the following three activities:

Identify the most important societal consequences of mobility-reducing interventions in the Netherlands other than those related to health(care);
Quantify the selected consequences in the Netherlands based on existing data, or to suggest ways to set up new studies to quantify them in the future, explicitly accounting for vulnerable groups;
Test the new insights by comparing the cost-effectiveness of different mobility-reducing interventions, choosing a societal perspective, and using an existing model for geographic spread of COVID-19 in the Netherlands.

Using a case study scenario of a lockdown of the Rotterdam-Rijnmond area in response to a local outbreak, the researchers will work out how economic and infectious disease models can be linked. During the case study, the project will mainly focus on: how does this lockdown affect mobility patterns of people (both within Rotterdam and to/from the rest of the country) and how does this in turn affect infectious disease spread and labour productivity?

The main output of this project will be a report for several key stakeholders that are invited to the workshop, summarizing the results and recommendations from the workshop and of the research activities that followed from it. The report will be discussed with the stakeholders via a second stakeholder meeting to identify follow-up actions.