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. 2024 Aug 16;230(2):382-393.
doi: 10.1093/infdis/jiae179.

What Is the Economic Benefit of Annual COVID-19 Vaccination From the Adult Individual Perspective?

Sarah M Bartsch  1   2   3 , Kelly J O'Shea  1   2   3 , Colleen Weatherwax  1   2   3 , Ulrich Strych  4 , Kavya Velmurugan  1   2   3 , Danielle C John  1   2   3 , Maria Elena Bottazzi  4   5 , Mustafa Hussein  6 , Marie F Martinez  1   2   3 , Kevin L Chin  1   2   3 , Allan Ciciriello  4 , Jessie Heneghan  1   2   3 , Alexis Dibbs  1   2   3 , Sheryl A Scannell  1   2   3 , Peter J Hotez  4   5 , Bruce Y Lee  1   2   3   6
Affiliations

What Is the Economic Benefit of Annual COVID-19 Vaccination From the Adult Individual Perspective?

Sarah M Bartsch et al. J Infect Dis. .

Abstract

Background: With coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) vaccination no longer mandated by many businesses/organizations, it is now up to individuals to decide whether to get any new boosters/updated vaccines going forward.

Methods: We developed a Markov model representing the potential clinical/economic outcomes from an individual perspective in the United States of getting versus not getting an annual COVID-19 vaccine.

Results: For an 18-49 year old, getting vaccinated at its current price ($60) can save the individual on average $30-$603 if the individual is uninsured and $4-$437 if the individual has private insurance, as long as the starting vaccine efficacy against severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection is ≥50% and the weekly risk of getting infected is ≥0.2%, corresponding to an individual interacting with 9 other people in a day under Winter 2023-2024 Omicron SARS-CoV-2 variant conditions with an average infection prevalence of 10%. For a 50-64 year old, these cost-savings increase to $111-$1278 and $119-$1706 for someone without and with insurance, respectively. The risk threshold increases to ≥0.4% (interacting with 19 people/day), when the individual has 13.4% preexisting protection against infection (eg, vaccinated 9 months earlier).

Conclusions: There is both clinical and economic incentive for the individual to continue to get vaccinated against COVID-19 each year.

Keywords: COVID-19; booster; economic; individual; model; vaccination.

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Conflict of interest statement

Potential conflicts of interest . P. J. H., M. E. B., and U. S. are coinventors of a COVID-19 recombinant protein vaccine technology owned by Baylor College of Medicine (BCM) that was recently licensed by BCM nonexclusively and with no patent restrictions to several companies committed to advance vaccines for low- and middle-income countries. The coinventors have no involvement in license negotiations conducted by BCM. Similar to other research universities, a long-standing BCM policy provides its faculty and staff, who make discoveries that result in a commercial license, a share of any royalty income, according to BCM policy. All other authors report no potential conflicts. All authors have submitted the ICMJE Form for Disclosure of Potential Conflicts of Interest. Conflicts that the editors consider relevant to the content of the manuscript have been disclosed.

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References

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