A new study shows the economic benefits of widespread, continuous COVID vaccination for adults in the United States. Indeed, the country would ultimately save more money than it would spend to vaccinate every person over age 65 with a single dose of an updated coronavirus vaccine. This is due to the vaccine’s ability to prevent deaths, hospitalizations, short- and long-term illnesses and productivity losses, such as lost workdays, in this age group, as researchers report using a computer model. The model focused on people without immunodeficiency conditions or medications. Meanwhile, among middle-aged adults, aged 50 to 64, widespread vaccination represents a good economic investment, the study concludes. Vaccinating healthy young adults aged 18 to 49 would also fall within accepted cost-effectiveness limits, under certain conditions.
In general, the study finds that broad vaccination could prevent 391 hospitalizations and 43 deaths from severe COVID-19 for every 100,000 people over age 65 vaccinated. For those age 18 to 49, those numbers would be lower, with 39 hospitalizations and 1 death prevented for every 100,000 vaccinated. The number of cases of COVID-19, of any severity, that could be prevented through broad vaccination was about the same for all three age groups, between 7,600 and 8,900 for every 100,000 adults vaccinated. Although the vast majority of U.S. adults have received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine since they became available in early 2021, the percentage receiving the updated vaccine in recent years has dropped markedly.
Even without counting lost productivity, the national COVID-19 vaccine effort saved money for most adult age groups purely by avoiding medical costs, the study concluded. Overall, among all adults over age 40, the nation saved more in avoided medical costs than it spent on the vaccine effort. As hospitalizations and deaths due to COVID-19 continue to decline, the burden of long COVID will have increasing importance in determining the economic attractiveness of future updated COVID-19 vaccines. Vaccination could represent ad additional protective factor dor other medical conditions. People who have had COVID-19 are at increased risk of developing certain inflammatory diseases of the airways, such as asthma, hay fever and chronic sinusitis.
However, vaccination against the SARS-CoV-2 virus appears to reduce the risk, according to a comprehensive epidemiological study led by researchers at Karolinska Institutet. The researchers compared 973,794 people who had had COVID-19 with 691,270 people who had been vaccinated against the SARS-CoV-2 virus and 4,388,409 healthy controls with no documented infection or vaccination. People who had had COVID-19 had a 66% higher risk of developing asthma, a 74% higher risk of chronic sinusitis and a 27% higher risk of hay fever compared with healthy controls. Vaccination against the virus had the opposite effect. The risk of asthma was 32% lower among vaccinated individuals compared with healthy unvaccinated individuals.
The risk of sinusitis and hay fever was also slightly lower. Considering how burdensome are asthma, chronic bronchitis and allergies for the U.S. sanitary system, taking advantage ov COVID vaccination to reduce other collateral medical conditions would let the nation to spare millions in medical costs.
- Edited by Dr. Gianfrancesco Cormaci, PhD, specialist in Clinical BIochemistry
Scientific references
Olbrich H et al. J Allergy Clin Immunol. 2025; in press.
Yeh L et al. Int J of Rheum Dis. 2024; 27(1):e14963.
Chang R et al. EClinicalMed. 2023 Feb; 56:101783.
