Full Citation
Title: Healthcare worker absenteeism, child care costs, and COVID-19 school closures: a simulation analysis
Citation Type: Working Paper
Publication Year: 2020
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DOI: 10.1101/2020.03.19.20039404
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Abstract: School closures have been enacted as a measure of mitigation during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic due to their ability to reduce transmission. It has been shown that school closures could cause absenteeism amongst healthcare workers with dependent children, but there is a need for detailed high-resolution analysis of the relationship between school closures and healthcare worker absenteeism to inform local community preparedness. We provide national-and county-level simulations of school closures and absenteeism across the United States. At the national level, we estimate the projected absenteeism rate to range from 7.5% to 8.6%, and the effectiveness of school closures to range from 172 to 218 fewer hospital beds used per 100,000 people at peak demand. At the county-level, we find substantial variations of projected absenteeism and school closure effects, ranging from 2.0% to 18.6% absenteeism and 88 to 280 fewer hospital beds used per 100,000 people at peak demand. We also find significant associations between levels of absenteeism and COVID-19 complication factors. We observe from our models that an estimated 98.8% of counties would find it less expensive to provide child care to all healthcare workers with children than to bear the costs of healthcare worker absenteeism during school closures, identifying child care subsidization as a potential solution to help maintain healthcare systems during a pandemic.
Url: https://covid-19.conacyt.mx/jspui/bitstream/1000/5635/1/1109596.pdf
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Authors: Chin, Elizabeth T; Huynh, Benjamin Q; Lo, Nathan C; Hastie, Trevor; Basu, Sanjay
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Pages: 1-17
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Data Collections: IPUMS USA
Topics: Health, Work, Family, and Time
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