Estimating the Economic Burden of COVID-19 in Iran\'s Most Deprived Area via Disability-adjusted Life Years and Productivity Losses

Original articleunits (ICUs) incurred costs ranging from $2,083 to $2,991, with productivity losses being the most frequently reported indirect costs.5 Besides, the economic crisis caused by the pandemic harms public health by diminishing the resources necessary for effective health interventions.7 Despite the importance of metrics such as infection and mortality rates in informing the public and policymakers, these indicators alone do not adequately reflect the disease's health impact.8,9 A critical measure for assessing health impact is disabilityadjusted life years (DALYs).10 The DALYs framework, which emerged IntroductIonThe disease caused by coronavirus disease 2019, also known as COVID-19, initially emerged in the late months of 2019 in Wuhan, China, and rapidly evolved into a major global pandemic.By the end of 2024, it had infected over 777 million individuals worldwide and resulted in more than 7 million fatalities.Concerning Iran, the statistics include more than 7.6 million confirmed cases alongside almost 147,000 deaths. 1 Given the high transmissibility, the pandemic has had multiple waves worldwide; countries have implemented different social distancing policies and regulatory restrictions to combat this virus.2 Since the pandemic began, nations have employed diverse nonpharmaceutical strategies aimed at mitigating disease transmission while also enacting policies to protect livelihoods.3 The pandemic has profoundly impacted quality of life by causing disease and premature mortality.4 It not only poses a major health risk but also brings a huge economic burden in the form of direct medical costs, direct nonmedical costs, and indirect costs resulting from decreased productivity attributable to morbidity and mortality.Consequently, the pandemic has impacted the economies of many countries through increased medical costs alongside work loss due to the disease, caregiver demands, and isolation protocols.3,5 As to the research conducted by Bartsch et al., a 20% infection rate of COVID-19 within the United States would have resulted in direct medical costs amounting to $163.4 billion during the outbreak.6 A systematic review identified that patients admitted to intensive care