Photo Credit: Sebastian Gorczowski

The following is a summary of “What is the economic benefit of annual COVID-19 vaccination from the adult individual perspective,” published in the April 2024 issue of Infectious Disease by Bartsch et al.

With COVID-19 in its fifth year, individuals are now deciding whether to get any new booster vaccines.

Researchers conducted a retrospective study evaluating the economic benefit of annual COVID-19 vaccination compared to not getting it. 

They developed a Markov model to check various potential outcomes of getting vaccinated versus not getting an annual COVID-19 vaccine from an individual perspective in the U.S. 

The results showed that an uninsured adult could save around $30-$603 by getting vaccinated at its current price ($60), and an individual with private insurance can save between $4-$437, provided the starting vaccine efficacy is ≥50%, and the weekly risk of getting infected is ≥0.2%, corresponding to individuals interacting with 9 other people in a day under Winter 2023-2024 Omicron SARS-CoV-2 variant with an infection prevalence of 10%. For a senior citizen (age 50-64), the cost-savings increase to $111-$1,278 and $119-$1,706 for someone without and with insurance, respectively. The risk threshold increases to ≥0.4% (interacting with 19 people/day), with 13.4% pre-existing protection against infection. 

Investigators concluded that vaccinating each year had clinical and economic incentives for individuals despite their age.

Source: academic.oup.com/jid/advance-article/doi/10.1093/infdis/jiae179/7641782