Cost effectiveness of non-pharmaceutical measures to prevent transmission of respiratory viruses (multiple reviews)
What is this? Non-pharmaceutical interventions are important control measures for minimizing transmission of respiratory viruses. Several reviews of their cost effectiveness are summarised here, with more details, including citations and links to the full reviews, available further down this page.
What was found: The Pérez Velasco review (search done in September 2011) found that a combination of pharmaceutical and non-pharmaceutical interventions, including social distancing and school closures, are cost effective for influenza pandemics. At the same time, the Lee review (search done in September 2011) also concluded that the use of physical interventions to prevent transmission of respiratory viruses appear to be cost effective during an epidemic or pandemic.
One included study in the Saunders-Hastings review (search done in July 2016) reported that social distancing and school closure are likely to be cost-effective in all settings, but noted that quarantine was not cost effective in any of the studied settings.
What are the reviews:
Citation: Lee KM, Shukla VK, Clark M, et al. Physical interventions to interrupt or reduce the spread of respiratory viruses — resource use implications: a systematic review. Ottawa: Canadian Agency for Drugs and Technologies in Health; 2011.
In this systematic review, the authors searched for studies of the costs of physical interventions or resource use to control or prevent the spread of respiratory viruses. They restricted their searches to articles published between 1995 and 2010 but did not restrict by language and did their most recent search in September 2011. They included 3 studies of resource use (2 using actual data and 1 using simulation) and 4 simulation studies of the costs or cost-effectiveness of physical interventions.
Citation: Pérez Velasco R, Praditsitthikorn N, Wichmann K, et al. Systematic review of economic evaluations of preparedness strategies and interventions against influenza pandemics. PLoS ONE. 2012;7(2):e30333.
In this systematic review, the authors searched for research into the cost effectiveness of interventions to control or prevent the 2009 H1N1 human influenza pandemic or other potential influenza pandemics. They restricted the searches to articles published in English, Spanish, German, Thai or Dutch and did the search in September 2011. They included 44 studies involving a variety of types of economic evaluation. All but two of the studies were model based, and 34 focused only on pharmaceutical interventions.
Citation: Saunders-Hastings P, Reisman J, Krewski D. Assessing the state of knowledge regarding the effectiveness of interventions to contain pandemic influenza transmission: a systematic review and narrative synthesis. PLoS ONE. 2016;11(12):e0168262.
In this systematic overview and narrative syntheses, the authors searched for systematic reviews and meta-analyses of the effects of pharmaceutical and non-pharmaceutical interventions for containing pandemic influenza transmission. They did not restrict their searches by date or language of publication and did their search in July 2016. They included 17 reviews.
Other Evidence Aid summaries:
Environmental measures to prevent transmission of infectious diseases (multiple reviews)
Hygiene measures to prevent transmission of infectious diseases (multiple reviews)
Isolation and quarantine to prevent transmission of infectious diseases (multiple reviews)
Social distancing methods to prevent transmission of COVID-19 (multiple reviews)