The burden of isolation to the individual: a comparison between isolation for COVID-19 and for other influenza-like illnesses in Japan

  1. Shinya Tsuzuki
  2. Norio Ohmagari
  3. Philippe Beutels

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Abstract

At present, there is scarce evidence about the burden associated with the isolation of COVID-19 patients. We aimed to assess the differences between COVID-19 and other influenza-like illnesses (ILIs) in disease burden brought by isolation. We conducted an online survey of 302 respondents who had COVID-19 or other ILIs and compared the burden of isolation due to sickness with one-to-one propensity score matching. The primary outcomes are the duration and productivity losses associated with isolation, the secondary outcome is the health-related quality of life (HRQoL) valuation on the day of the survey. Acute symptoms of outpatient COVID-19 and other ILIs lasted 17 (interquartile range (IQR) 9–32) and 7 (IQR 4–10) days, respectively. The length of isolation due to COVID-19 was 18 (IQR 10–33) days and that due to other ILIs was 7 (IQR 4–11) days, respectively. The monetary productivity loss of isolation due to COVID-19 was 1424.3 (IQR 825.6–2545.5) USD and that due to other ILIs was 606.1 (IQR 297.0–1090.9) USD, respectively. HRQoL at the time of the survey was lower in the COVID-19 group than in the ‘other ILIs’ group (0.89 and 0.96, P = 0.001). COVID-19 infection imposes a substantial disease burden, even in patients with non-severe disease. This burden is larger for COVID-19 than other ILIs, mainly because the required isolation period is longer.

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  1. Version published to 10.1017/s0950268821002569
  2. ScreenIT

    SciScore for 10.1101/2021.08.19.21262267: (What is this?)

    Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.

    Table 1: Rigor

    EthicsConsent: Informed consent was given before the start of the survey.
    IRB: All analyses were conducted by R, version 4.0.5.[22] Ethics approval: This study was approved by the Ethics Committee of National Center for Global Health and Medicine (NCGM-G-004001-01).
    Sex as a biological variablenot detected.
    RandomizationThe participants were voluntarily and randomly recruited from registrants of NEO MARKETING INC, a Japanese marketing research company.
    Blindingnot detected.
    Power Analysisnot detected.

    Table 2: Resources

    No key resources detected.

    Results from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).

    Results from LimitationRecognizer: We detected the following sentences addressing limitations in the study:
    Our study includes several limitations. First, as our data were based on an online survey, it requires participants to have basic internet literacy. That is, participants of our survey might have more interest in their health status and better knowledge of basic computational skill than the general Japanese population do. Second, as already discussed in this section, productivity loss was evaluated only from participants’ viewpoint, and no data are available about its societal perspective (accommodation fee, healthcare professional personnel, etc.). Third, QOL was assessed at the day of questionnaire survey and not assessed at the time they had symptoms due to COVID-19 or other ILIs because 15-D questionnaire does not set any recall period. More precise quantitative evaluation of productivity loss and health-related QOL will be a future challenge. In conclusion, our results showed that COVID-19 imposes heavier burden on us than other ILIs do, not only its symptoms but also productivity loss due to its longer duration of isolation. These findings will be helpful for healthcare policy makers to determine the appropriate duration of isolation. “long COVID” might be a common phenomenon which bring us an additional burden, then quantitative evaluation of the burden of “long COVID” would be one of future challenges as well as more precise assessment of productivity loss and QOL value.

    Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.

    Results from Barzooka: We did not find any issues relating to the usage of bar graphs.

    Results from JetFighter: We did not find any issues relating to colormaps.

    Results from rtransparent:
    • Thank you for including a conflict of interest statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • Thank you for including a funding statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • No protocol registration statement was detected.

    Results from scite Reference Check: We found no unreliable references.

    About SciScore

    SciScore is an automated tool that is designed to assist expert reviewers by finding and presenting formulaic information scattered throughout a paper in a standard, easy to digest format. SciScore checks for the presence and correctness of RRIDs (research resource identifiers), and for rigor criteria such as sex and investigator blinding. For details on the theoretical underpinning of rigor criteria and the tools shown here, including references cited, please follow this link.

  3. Version published to 10.1101/2021.08.19.21262267 on medRxiv