Burden Disease of COVID-19: Disability-Adjusted Life Years (DALYs) in Bogota, Colombia
Authors: Porras-Ramírez Alexandra 
Published: February 2023

Background: Disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) are a synthetic health indicator used to measure the burden of disease at the population level, which provides joint information on the fatal and non-fatal consequences of diseases, injuries and risk factors. This indicator as the number of years of healthy life lost uses both to describe the epidemiological situation in different countries or regions and to estimate the population impact of different interventions. The World Health Organization as a public health emergency of international importance (ESPII) classified the new coronavirus (COVID-19). In December 2019, an association of pneumonia cases emerged in Wuhan (Hubei province, China), with a sample common to a wholesale market for seafood, fish, and live animals. On January 7, 2020, the Chinese authorities established a new virus of the Corona viridae family as the agent promoting the outbreak, which was later designated SARS-COV-2 1. The Chinese authorities shared the genetic sequence on January 12. The disease caused by this new virus by international consensus COVID-19. The Emergency Committee of the International Health Regulations (IHR, 2005) declared the outbreak as a PHEIC at its meeting on January 30, 2020. Subsequently, the WHO considered it a global pandemic on March 11, 2020 ISCIII. Cases on all continents and on March 6 the first case in Colombia and the National Institute of Health (INS) notifies the Ministry of Health daily of the figures of accumulated confirmed cases of COVID-19, as follows: total of cases, cases in hospitalizations, ICU admissions, deaths and recovered cases. The objective of this work was to estimate the burden of disease due to COVID-19 in Bogotá for the years 2020 and 2021 in order to establish the burden of disease due to this pathology. Methods: We conducted an ecological study between Jan 1, 2020, and Dec 31, 2021. We used final prevalence estimates and disability weights to estimate years lived with disability and disability-adjusted life-years (DALYs) for COVID-19 in Bogotá. Findings: The public data on COVID 19 published on the Salud-data website of the Bogotá Health Center, available at https:// saludata.saludcapital.gov.co/osb/. A total of 13,428 deaths and 482,346 laboratory-confirmed cases of COVID 19 in the study period. The discount rate that evaluates what benefits they prefer in the present and not in the future into account, so it is necessary to introduce this correction factor for future benefits, which is a procedure commonly used in economics. This same situation occurs in health, because the value given to a year of healthy life gained in the present is different and superior to that given to a year of healthy life gained in the future. The discount weight into account in the calculation as a correction since societies tend to value a year of life lost or gained differently during young adulthood than during early childhood or old age. This discount model allows the time lived at different ages to be valued using an exponential function. The burden of disease is the gap between existing health conditions and an ideal health situation. Life expectancy to calculate based on the assumption that someone is currently living and in the future to current mortality rates for each age group (42). In this case, the life table with the highest life expectancy at birth in the world used, which is that of Japan, with 80 years for men and 82.5 years for women, in addition to allowing us to compare ourselves with studies that use this value (43). This pandemic has created a greater urgency to strengthen health systems in most countries and the burden of disease must know in order to know the possible economic impact. Interpretation: This pandemic has created an increased urgency to strengthen health systems in most countries. Taking no action to address the burden of COVID-19 should not be an option.