Lockdowns and Vaccines: Did Covid-19 Interventions Help Reduce the Long-Term Health Economic Consequences in Ghana?

Abstract COVID-19 has accounted for over 40,000 job losses and US$35 million in direct management costs in Ghana in 2021 with over 1,400 deaths so far. This study simulated the plausible long-term health economic consequences of COVID-19 and the scale of mitigation that lockdowns and vaccines could offer using the CoronAvirus Lifelong Modelling and Simulation (CALMS) algorithm, a published and fully validated agent-based model. The results showed that a whole population vaccination and periodic lockdown intervention could reduce the long-term COVID-19 infections, mortalities hospitalisations, long COVID and direct healthcare costs by more than 90% in the next ten years in Ghana. Among the simulated interventions, the whole population and periodic lockdown could be the most effective intervention. However, it could be the most expensive intervention (£291 million), followed by lockdowns (£251 million) and vaccinating clinically vulnerable populations (£42,115) at the end of the cohort’s lifetime. A periodic lockdown and whole-population vaccination could be the most effective intervention to reduce Ghana’s long-term COVID-19-related health economics outcomes. Increasing the whole population vaccination target alone could reduce Ghana’s long-term COVID-19 health economics outcomes. Future studies will need to look at wider outcomes (than just the health outcomes) to establish the full cost-benefit of these interventions.