Covid-19 vaccine benefits worth up to $38 trillion in first year alone

COVVI-19 vaccines cost $ 79 billion to develop and deliver worldwide, but have provided social and economic benefits worth 5 billions of dollars and 38 billions of dollars worldwide in the first year only, on the basis of infections avoided, hospitalizations and deaths. This is a return on investment between $ 60 and $ 475 per invested dollar.

“These studies show the advantages of vaccines, not only in terms of safeguarding lives, but also that there is a strong economic argument,” said Oliver Watson at the Imperial College in London. “I hope this will highlight the value of continuous investment in the research and development of vaccines.”

Watson and his colleagues did not try to estimate how high global economic growth was due to the vaccines it would have been otherwise. On the contrary, their work is an estimate of the economic values ​​of health benefits, on the basis of their previous study in 2022 which estimated that COVVI-19 vaccines avoided more than 14 million deaths during their first year of use.

For the infections avoided, the team estimated the number of days of work lost against the disease and the productivity value of these working days. For the hospitalizations avoided, the team estimated the costs of health care that were not necessary.

For deaths, the team has estimated how many years of life have been saved and the value of these years according to a measure of the quantity of society which are worth the years of life or the quantity of people who are ready to pay for an additional year of life – a standard approach used in many other studies.

The lower estimate of $ 5,000 billion in services came from the approach according to the life of the company, and the figure of 38 billions of dollars is based on the quantity of individuals enjoying their lives.

Looking at years of saved life means that the estimate takes into account that many of those whose life was saved by vaccines were not likely to live much longer, Watson explains. Some other approaches bring value to saved lives regardless of age, which would lead to a much higher estimate of economic benefits.

“This study highlights the enormous extent of the advantages and yields on investments that vaccines are comfortable have brought nations around the world,” said Richard Carpiano at the University of California in Riverside. “Studies like this are important because resources are over and decision-makers must make important decisions about how to allocate resources.”

“This shows that cocovio vaccination has given an excellent return on investment,” said Angela Rasmussen at the University of Saskatchewan in Canada.

The analysis is appropriate given recent events, such as the United States’s decision to stop half a billion dollars of funding for the development of the mRNA vaccine, Carpiano explains. Watson says that timing is a coincidence because his team has been working on estimates since the last US elections.

Watson’s study in 2022 believing that vaccines saved more than 14 million lives in 2021 only were criticized for vaccine skeptics. A common statement is that it cannot be fair because the number of excess deaths-that is to say the deaths likely to be due to COVID-19-was even higher in 2021 than in 2020.

But 2021 was the year when numerous measures to control the spread of COVVI-19, such as locking, have been lifted, which means that many more people were exposed to the virus than in 2020, Watson explains. Without vaccination, mortality rates would have been much higher. “These kinds of arguments find it difficult to understand this counterfeit,” he says.

A study published in July this year estimated that COVVI -19 vaccines saved 2.5 million lives worldwide until the end of 2024 – much less than the estimate of the Watson team. Indeed, the July study uses much lower figures for the proportion of people infected with COVID-19, how many people have been vaccinated, the effectiveness of vaccines to prevent deaths, etc.

Watson thinks that the figures for his study are more precise. Rasmussen also believes that the July study underestimates the number of saved lives. “But even if [the July] Estimates are closer to the brand, more than 2 million saved lives are still very successful, ”she says.

Almost all other estimates of the number of lives saved by COVVI-19 vaccines are specific to the region. For example, a study by the World Health Organization estimated that COVVI-19 vaccines had saved 1.4 million lives in Europe only in March 2023. ”[This] Similar estimates have shown estimates similar to ours when we have examined Europe’s figures, ”explains Watson.