There is a cost-benefit ratio for Covid vaccination… for ninety-year-olds
Is it worth getting vaccinated for Covid? Or rather, to put it from an economic point of view, what is the cost-benefit ratio of the Covid vaccination? From what age, or under what conditions, is vaccination economically useful, considering its cost, including social costs, and its benefit?
An evaluation that may appear cynical, but economics was created precisely to make cynical comparisons, based on the usefulness of choices considered without frills.
The British government made this assessment of economic utility in its guidelines for the anti-covid vaccination which, in the United Kingdom, costs 25 pounds, around 30 euros, but is provided free of charge to those aged over 75 or to some particular categories. Here's what the government website announcing the spring vaccination campaign says :
Evaluation of cost-effectiveness
A bespoke, non-standard cost-effectiveness assessment method has been developed to reflect the uncertainty surrounding COVID-19. This cost-effectiveness assessment was one of the factors taken into account by the JCVI (Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation, the committee that evaluates the usefulness of vaccinations in the United Kingdom) in formulating its advice for spring 2024. The Cost-effectiveness was considered based on age group and clinical risk group.
Using a distribution cost of £25 per vaccine (as estimated by NHS England), the non-standard cost-effectiveness assessment for booster vaccination in spring 2024 indicated that, under assumptions describing the most projected scenario plausible, vaccination is probably cost-effective if offered to the following groups:
- all adults aged 90 years and older who do not fall into a clinical risk group
- all adults aged 80 years and older who fall into a clinical risk group
- all adults aged 65 years and older with immunosuppression.
The limitations of the current cost-effectiveness assessment are acknowledged, including the high-level uncertainties that remain regarding the epidemiology of COVID-19, the risk heterogeneity found in immunosuppressed people of all ages, and the high exposure risk found in care homes, which may not be fully captured in existing assessment. It is also recognized that a high proportion of older adults live with comorbidities and that vaccine uptake is higher in age-based universal programmes. Overall, the JCVI considered it appropriate to offer a vaccine dose in spring 2024 to a larger group of people than identified solely in the cost-effectiveness assessment of the most plausible scenario.
In fact, in the end the free vaccine was offered to people over 75 in general, as well as to people over 65 with problems. But if there is no real advantage from vaccination for those under 90, why make it compulsory for everyone, as in Italy? Why not completely cancel the useless sanitation now? And, above all, why does no one apologize?
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The article There is a cost-benefit ratio for Covid vaccination… for ninety-year-olds comes from Economic Scenarios .
This is a machine translation of a post published on Scenari Economici at the URL https://scenarieconomici.it/il-rapporto-costi-benefici-per-la-vaccinazione-covid-ce-per-i-novantenni/ on Tue, 27 Feb 2024 08:00:40 +0000.