A cost-benefit analysis of COVID-19 lockdowns in Australia

Abstract

This paper conducts a cost-benefit analysis of Australia's Covid-19 lockdown strategy relative to pursuit of a mitigation strategy in March 2020. The estimated additional deaths from a mitigation strategy are 11,500 to 40,000, implying a Cost per Quality Adjusted Life Year saved by locking down of at least 11 times the generally employed figure of $100,000 for health interventions in Australia. The lockdowns do not then seem to have been justified by reference to the standard benchmark. Consideration of the information available to the Australian government in March 2020 yields a similar ratio and therefore the same conclusion that lockdown was not warranted. If Australia experiences a new outbreak, and cannot contain it without resort to a nationwide lockdown, the death toll from adopting a mitigation strategy at this point would be even less than had it done so in March 2020, due to the vaccination campaign, lessons learned since March 2020, and because the period over which the virus would then inflict casualties would now be much less than the period from March 2020. This would favour a mitigation policy even more strongly than in March 2020. This approach of assessing the savings in quality adjusted life years and comparing them to a standard benchmark figure ensures that all quality adjusted life years saved by various health interventions are treated equally, which accords with the ethical principle of equity across people.

Keywords: Australia; Cost-benefit analysis; Covid-19; Lockdowns.