The direct disease burden of COVID-19 in Belgium in 2020 and 2021

BMC Public Health

Table 1 Health states and disability weights for estimating the COVID-19 burden in Belgium

Health state	Description	Data input proxy	Disability weight (95% uncertainty interval)
Asymptomatic	Has infection but no symptoms	Estimates of suspected asymptomatic community cases	0 (0.000 – 0.000)
Mild/Moderate	Has fever and aches, and feels weak, which causes some difficulty with daily activities.	Positive (and/or suspected) cases community cases	0.051 (0.032 – 0.074)
Severe	Has high fever and pain, and feels very weak, which causes great difficulty with daily activities	Positive (and/or suspected) cases requiring a non-intensive care hospitalization	0.133 (0.088-0.190)
Critical	Intensive care unit Admission	Positive (and/or suspected) cases requiring intensive care hospitalization	0.655 (0.579-0.727)
Post-acute consequences	Is always tired and easily upset. The person feels pain all over the body and is depressed		0.219 (0.148-0.308)

The uncertainty around the disability weights was estimated through a Monte Carlo simulation approach as described in Salomon et al. (2015) and Haagsma et al. (2015) [24, 25]. These DWs are defined per day lived in each health state, as they are multiplied with the estimated number of person-days per year in each health state to arrive at YLD

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