The outbreak of the pandemic COVID-19 (Corona Virus) has resulted in international and national strategies, such as social distancing and travel bans, which have mitigated the health loss due to the pandemic but also given rise to a severe economic crisis. Both factors, the pandemic, and the economic crisis, can be expected to have an impact on the quality-of-life of the population. The objective of this study was to estimate the impact on the quality-of-life of the Swedish adult population during the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic.
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Sweden is among the countries with the highest COVID-19 death rates, as measured in terms of deaths with a COVID-19 diagnosis per million people. The number of cases, however, does not always serve as the best way to measure the burden of a disease as it does not take lost life-years, or the quality of life-years into consideration. Health economists therefore use the concept of Quality-Adjusted Life-Years (QALYs) to estimate the burden of diseases and injuries. The objective of this study is to estimate the disease burden of COVID-19 in Sweden in terms of QALYs lost during the first half of 2020.