Who can go back to work when the COVID-19 pandemic remits?

Abstract

This paper seeks to determine which workers affected by lockdown measures can return to work when a government decides to apply lockdown exit strategies. This system, which we call Sequential Selective Multidimensional Decision (SSMD), involves deciding sequentially, by geographical areas, sectors of activity, age groups and immunity, which workers can return to work at a given time according to the epidemiological criteria of the country as well as that of a group of reference countries, used as a benchmark, that have suffered a lower level of lockdown de-escalation strategies. We apply SSMD to Spain, based on affiliation to the Social Security system prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, and conclude that 98.37% of the population could be affected. The proposed system makes it possible to accurately identify the target population for serological IgG antibody tests in the work field, as well as those affected by special income replacement measures due to lockdown being maintained over a longer period.