Abstract
Background: The COVID-19 pandemic exacted a high toll on Malaysia throughout the year 2021, with more than 31,000 deaths reported and a cumulative case count of almost three million. Burden of disease measures, such as disability-adjusted life years (DALYs), offer a more appropriate metric for assessing the burden of COVID-19 than absolute death or case counts by combining both mortality and morbidity components thereby allowing for a comprehensive and comparable evaluation of the disease 's population health impact. The aim of this study was to estimate the total disease burden of acute COVID-19 in Malaysia in 2021 as measured by DALYs, and to compare the direct impact of COVID-19 relative to other leading causes of disease and injury in the country.
Methods: Data on individual COVID-19 deaths and daily case counts in Malaysia during 2021 were obtained from a public repository provided by the Ministry of Health. DALYs are the sum of years of life lost to premature mortality (YLL) and years lived with disability (YLD). YLL directly attributable to COVID-19 were derived by multiplying the number of deaths in each age-group by the age- and sex-conditional life expectancy as defined in the national life table for 2021 published by the Department of Statistics Malaysia (DOSM). To calculate YLD, person-years for each COVID-19 category or health state (derived from the sum of active cases daily scaled by a factor of 1/365.25 to reflect the contribution of individual days to a complete year, since DALYs use year as the unit of time) were multiplied by the corresponding disability weight (representing severity; scale of 0 to 1 with 0 indicating no disability) for that health state. Disability weights were adopted from the COVID-19 consensus model and methods outlined by the European Burden of Disease Network.
Results: There were nearly 700,000 DALYs lost due to death or illness caused by COVID-19 in Malaysia in 2021, corresponding to a per-capita burden of 2,029 DALYs per 100,000 people. Overall, YLL (mortality) contributed to 98% of total DALYs, with males and females losing an average of 20.7 and 22.4 years, respectively, due to dying from COVID-19. The disease burden directly attributable to COVID-19 is second only to that caused by ischaemic heart disease, which was the leading cause of fatal burden in the country in pre-pandemic times. Discussion/Conclusion: These DALY estimates highlight that the COVID-19 pandemic has caused a substantial health burden on the Malaysian population. Continued estimation of the disease burden associated with COVID-19 at regular intervals is essential to determine further losses averted by the rollout of the National COVID-19 Immunisation Programme / Program Imunisasi COVID-19 Kebangsaan (NIP/ PICK ).
Links
- https://apcph.cphm.my/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/APCPH2022-P-40.pdf
- https://apcph.cphm.my/wp-content/uploads/wpforms/1176-1e04940bb5d885bf8711ed1909[...]
BibTeX (Download)
@proceedings{APCPH2022-P-40,
title = {Disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) due to COVID-19 in Malaysia in 2021},
author = {LeeAnn Tan and Shubash Shander Ganapathy and Chan Yee Mang and Nazirah Alias and Nur Hamizah Nasaruddin and Khaw Wan-Fei and Azahadi Omar},
url = {https://apcph.cphm.my/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/APCPH2022-P-40.pdf
https://apcph.cphm.my/wp-content/uploads/wpforms/1176-1e04940bb5d885bf8711ed19095a89ed/APCPH2022-P-40-691e94141fd85463c9dba59f8c9540e6.pdf},
year = {2022},
date = {2022-08-02},
urldate = {2022-08-02},
issue = {7},
abstract = {Background: The COVID-19 pandemic exacted a high toll on Malaysia throughout the year 2021, with more than 31,000 deaths reported and a cumulative case count of almost three million. Burden of disease measures, such as disability-adjusted life years (DALYs), offer a more appropriate metric for assessing the burden of COVID-19 than absolute death or case counts by combining both mortality and morbidity components thereby allowing for a comprehensive and comparable evaluation of the disease 's population health impact. The aim of this study was to estimate the total disease burden of acute COVID-19 in Malaysia in 2021 as measured by DALYs, and to compare the direct impact of COVID-19 relative to other leading causes of disease and injury in the country.
Methods: Data on individual COVID-19 deaths and daily case counts in Malaysia during 2021 were obtained from a public repository provided by the Ministry of Health. DALYs are the sum of years of life lost to premature mortality (YLL) and years lived with disability (YLD). YLL directly attributable to COVID-19 were derived by multiplying the number of deaths in each age-group by the age- and sex-conditional life expectancy as defined in the national life table for 2021 published by the Department of Statistics Malaysia (DOSM). To calculate YLD, person-years for each COVID-19 category or health state (derived from the sum of active cases daily scaled by a factor of 1/365.25 to reflect the contribution of individual days to a complete year, since DALYs use year as the unit of time) were multiplied by the corresponding disability weight (representing severity; scale of 0 to 1 with 0 indicating no disability) for that health state. Disability weights were adopted from the COVID-19 consensus model and methods outlined by the European Burden of Disease Network.
Results: There were nearly 700,000 DALYs lost due to death or illness caused by COVID-19 in Malaysia in 2021, corresponding to a per-capita burden of 2,029 DALYs per 100,000 people. Overall, YLL (mortality) contributed to 98% of total DALYs, with males and females losing an average of 20.7 and 22.4 years, respectively, due to dying from COVID-19. The disease burden directly attributable to COVID-19 is second only to that caused by ischaemic heart disease, which was the leading cause of fatal burden in the country in pre-pandemic times. Discussion/Conclusion: These DALY estimates highlight that the COVID-19 pandemic has caused a substantial health burden on the Malaysian population. Continued estimation of the disease burden associated with COVID-19 at regular intervals is essential to determine further losses averted by the rollout of the National COVID-19 Immunisation Programme / Program Imunisasi COVID-19 Kebangsaan (NIP/ PICK ).},
howpublished = {published online at https://apcph.cphm.my},
note = {Type: POSTER PRESENTATION; Organisation: Institute for Public Health, National Institutes of Health, Ministry of Health Malaysia},
keywords = {},
pubstate = {published},
tppubtype = {proceedings}
}