The value of COVID-19 tests in Latin America

Testing is a crucial strategy to control the spread of a pandemic. Voluntary participation in this strategy will depend on individual preferences towards and willingness-to-pay (WTP) for test results. We distributed a web-based, contingent valuation survey to social-media users in 16 Latin American...

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Autores principales: Trudeau, Jennifer M., Alicea-Planas, Jessica, Vásquez, William F.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Elsevier B.V. 2020
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7550178/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33126025
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ehb.2020.100931
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author Trudeau, Jennifer M.
Alicea-Planas, Jessica
Vásquez, William F.
author_facet Trudeau, Jennifer M.
Alicea-Planas, Jessica
Vásquez, William F.
author_sort Trudeau, Jennifer M.
collection PubMed
description Testing is a crucial strategy to control the spread of a pandemic. Voluntary participation in this strategy will depend on individual preferences towards and willingness-to-pay (WTP) for test results. We distributed a web-based, contingent valuation survey to social-media users in 16 Latin American countries to evaluate regional attitudes towards the emerging COVID-19 outbreak and WTP for COVID-19 testing. We observe that the cost of the test and household income are important determinants of testing intentions. We find higher WTP among those reporting greater concern relative to the average respondent. Accounting for uncertainty, our results indicate a WTP of approximately $45 dollars or 4.2 % of monthly income among respondents. These results, paired with our predicted participation rate of between 84–94 % for a $1 test, suggest that local officials will be able to effectively recruit participation in this mitigation strategy given the appropriate subsidization structure.
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spelling pubmed-75501782020-10-13 The value of COVID-19 tests in Latin America Trudeau, Jennifer M. Alicea-Planas, Jessica Vásquez, William F. Econ Hum Biol Article Testing is a crucial strategy to control the spread of a pandemic. Voluntary participation in this strategy will depend on individual preferences towards and willingness-to-pay (WTP) for test results. We distributed a web-based, contingent valuation survey to social-media users in 16 Latin American countries to evaluate regional attitudes towards the emerging COVID-19 outbreak and WTP for COVID-19 testing. We observe that the cost of the test and household income are important determinants of testing intentions. We find higher WTP among those reporting greater concern relative to the average respondent. Accounting for uncertainty, our results indicate a WTP of approximately $45 dollars or 4.2 % of monthly income among respondents. These results, paired with our predicted participation rate of between 84–94 % for a $1 test, suggest that local officials will be able to effectively recruit participation in this mitigation strategy given the appropriate subsidization structure. Elsevier B.V. 2020-12 2020-10-12 /pmc/articles/PMC7550178/ /pubmed/33126025 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ehb.2020.100931 Text en © 2020 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. Since January 2020 Elsevier has created a COVID-19 resource centre with free information in English and Mandarin on the novel coronavirus COVID-19. The COVID-19 resource centre is hosted on Elsevier Connect, the company's public news and information website. Elsevier hereby grants permission to make all its COVID-19-related research that is available on the COVID-19 resource centre - including this research content - immediately available in PubMed Central and other publicly funded repositories, such as the WHO COVID database with rights for unrestricted research re-use and analyses in any form or by any means with acknowledgement of the original source. These permissions are granted for free by Elsevier for as long as the COVID-19 resource centre remains active.
spellingShingle Article
Trudeau, Jennifer M.
Alicea-Planas, Jessica
Vásquez, William F.
The value of COVID-19 tests in Latin America
title The value of COVID-19 tests in Latin America
title_full The value of COVID-19 tests in Latin America
title_fullStr The value of COVID-19 tests in Latin America
title_full_unstemmed The value of COVID-19 tests in Latin America
title_short The value of COVID-19 tests in Latin America
title_sort value of covid-19 tests in latin america
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7550178/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33126025
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ehb.2020.100931
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