Healthcare worker absenteeism, child care costs, and COVID-19 school closures: a simulation analysis

Elizabeth T Chin; Benjamin Q Huynh; Nathan C Lo; Trevor Hastie; Sanjay Basu

All Practitioners/Technicians Support staff NHES 0.89 7.5% 7.2% 7.9% IPUMS 0.89 8.6% 9.2% 7.4% IPUMS 0. 6 7.3% 8.3% 6.3% Table 2 . Sensitivity analysis of absenteeism estimate using various population seeds. National Household Education Surveys Program (NHES) found that 50% of households had difficulty finding or could not find satisfactory child care. Integrated Public Use Microdata Series (IPUMS) are state specific seeds derived from the household structure of healthcare workers. Survey data from both the Pew Research Center and the US Census Bureau indicating that 89% of working couples rely on the mother for primary child care. To test sensitivity, we calculated absenteeism by assuming that 60% of working couples rely on the mother for primary child care. Table 3 . Sensitivity analysis of transmission models under varying R 0 values and contact conditions. School closures (SC) reduce the risk of child-child interactions by 90%. Household (HH) interactions increase child-other age group interactions by 10%. Both models assume social distancing, which reduces all interactions by 50%