Estimating the direct Disability-Adjusted Life Years (DALYs) associated with SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) in the Republic of Ireland: The first full year

Objectives 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).

Methods 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 March 01, 2020, to February 28, 2021. Life expectancy is based on the Global Burden of Disease (GBD) Study life tables for 2019.

Results 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 51,532.1 (95% Uncertainty Intervals [UI] 50,671.6, 52,294.3). Overall, YLL contributed to 98.7% 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.

Conclusion 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.