Economic impacts of COVID-19: Evidence from the EMIS COVID-19 Symptom Surveillance tool

This project is based on primary data from a COVID-19 Symptom Surveillance survey tool, developed by EMIS Health and Patient Access in collaboration with the Royal College of General Practitioner’s Research and Surveillance Centre and the University of Oxford.

The tool surveys people about their experiences of the COVID-19 pandemic and, to date, has collected data from over 40,000 respondents. This study aims to:

• Develop a questionnaire relating the COVID-19 pandemic to health, well-being, health-related quality of life outcomes, and the utilisation of health and social care services.
• Analyse the survey data and estimate the economic consequences of the pandemic in terms of health care and social care costs, health-related quality of life, and work and productivity losses, amenable to cost-effectiveness based decision-making.
• Assess how the economic impacts of the pandemic vary by symptomatic status, stage of illness, socioeconomic status, sociodemographic characteristics, and lockdown phases.
• Establish pathways for the linkage of survey data with electronic health records for further analyses of the consequences of the pandemic on the health system.

Findings from the project will inform government departments, academic groups, and other decision-making bodies. The results will feed into decision-analytic models and health care and welfare reforms planning, supporting cost-effectiveness assessments of policy decisions.