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Abstract Due to COVID-19, many countries including Japan have implemented a suspension of economic activities for infection control. It has contributed to reduce the transmission of COVID-19 but caused severe economic losses. Today, several promising vaccines have been developed and are already being distributed in some countries. Therefore, we evaluated various vaccine and intensive countermeasure strategies with constraint of economic loss using SEIR model to obtain knowledge of how to balance economy with infection control in Japan. Our main result is that the vaccination strategy that prioritizes younger generation outperformed the other strategies in terms of deaths. On the other hand, when we focused on strategies that prioritize older generation, as Japan has decided to do, the optimal vaccination strategy was determined by the basic reproduction number and acceptable...

This study quantifies the economic effect of a possible lockdown of Tokyo to prevent the spread of Covid-19. The negative effect of the lockdown may propagate to other regions through supply chains because of a shortage of supply and demand. Applying an agent-based model to the actual supply chains of nearly 1.6 million firms in Japan, we simulate what would happen to production activities outside Tokyo when production activities that are not essential to citizens’ survival in Tokyo were shut down for a certain period. We find that when Tokyo is locked down for a month, the indirect effect on other regions would be twice as large as the direct effect on Tokyo, leading to a total production loss of 27 trillion yen in Japan, or 5.3% of its annual GDP. Although the shut down in Tokyo accounts for 21% of the total production in Japan, the lockdown would result in a reduction in the...

Effects of the COVID-19 shocks in the Japanese labor market vary across people of different age groups, genders, employment types, education levels, occupations, and industries. We document heterogeneous changes in employment and earnings in response to the COVID-19 shocks, observed in various data sources during the initial months after onset of the pandemic in Japan. We then feed these shocks into a life-cycle model of heterogeneous agents to quantify welfare consequences of the COVID-19 shocks. In each dimension of the heterogeneity, the shocks are amplified for those who earned less prior to the crisis. Contingent workers are hit harder than regular workers, younger workers than older workers, females than males, and workers engaged in social and non-flexible jobs than those in ordinary and flexible jobs. The most severely hurt by the COVID-19 shocks has been a group of female,...

In this paper, I study a simple SIR-Macro model to examine Japan’s second soft lockdown, starting in January 2021. The model’s parameters are calibrated to capture both infection and economic fluctuations in 2020. I find that the government should extend this lockdown long enough to avoid another future lockdown, given the country’s medical capacity. In addition, I consider the ICU targeting policy that keeps the number of severe patients at a constant level, mimicking the monetary policy’s inflation targeting. These macro-level containment policies can help develop age-dependent strategies using the timing differences of vaccinations between the young and the old.

The current coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic is associated with a heavy burden on the mental and physical health of patients, regional healthcare resources, and global economic activity. Many patients with lung cancer are thought to be affected by this situation. Therefore, in this study, we aimed to evaluate the impact of COVID-19 pandemic on lung cancer treatment scheduling. We retrospectively reviewed the medical records of lung cancer patients who were undergoing anticancer treatment at the National Hospital Organization Kyoto Medical Center (600 beds) in Kyoto, Japan, between 1 March 2020 and 31 May 2020. After the medical records were reviewed, the patients were assigned to one of two groups, depending on whether their lung cancer treatment schedule was delayed. We assessed the characteristics, types of histopathology and treatment, and the reason for the delay. A...

Objective: Current pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is associated with a heavy burden on the mental and physical health of patients, regional healthcare resources, and global economic activity. Many patients with lung cancer are thought to be affected by this situation. Therefore, we aimed to evaluate the impact of COVID-19 pandemic on lung cancer treatment scheduling. Study design: We retrospectively reviewed the medical records of lung cancer patients who were undergoing anti-cancer treatment at the National Hospital Organization Kyoto Medical Center (600 beds) in Kyoto, Japan, between March 1, 2020 and May 31, 2020. Methods: After the medical records were reviewed, the patients were assigned to one of two groups, depending on whether their lung cancer treatment schedule was delayed. We assessed the characteristics, types of histopathology and treatment, and the...