A new study published in PLOS Medicine found that every dollar spent on the development and distribution of COVID-19 vaccines generated between $81 and $810 in global economic value during the first year of vaccination.
This is the first global analysis of the return on investment (ROI) in vaccines. The findings show that vaccines not only saved lives but also represented a highly cost-effective economic investment.
“Our study demonstrates that the unprecedented investments made in COVID-19 vaccines during the early stages of the pandemic yielded enormous health and economic benefits. Vaccine development and equitable distribution should be a priority during global health crises,” says Mark Jit, Professor of Global Health at New York University and one of the study’s authors.
The researchers assessed the economic impact of vaccines during their first year of availability, from December 8, 2020, to December 8, 2021, when populations had not yet developed immunity to the virus. The analysis covered 173 countries. The scientists compared the costs of vaccine development, manufacturing, and delivery with indicators such as years of life gained, quality-adjusted life years preserved through averted hospitalizations and deaths, labor productivity, and healthcare costs saved.
Worldwide, vaccine development and delivery cost $79.4 billion, while the resulting health and economic benefits of vaccination were estimated at between $6.43 trillion and $64.3 trillion.
The authors emphasize that these economic benefits were distributed unevenly across countries. High-income countries gained significantly more, largely due to earlier access to vaccines, higher vaccination uptake, and the age structure of their populations. Most low- and middle-income countries, meanwhile, did not gain widespread access to vaccines until late 2021, by which time many people had already been infected and developed some degree of immunity.
Nevertheless, the authors estimate that, relative to the size of their economies, low-income countries avoided the greatest healthcare and productivity-related costs.
“The key lesson is that vaccines must be delivered quickly to the countries that need them most. Because of delays, vaccines were no longer as effective in many countries as they could have been,” Jit says.
The researchers conclude that rapid investment in vaccine development in response to emerging viral threats is essential to protecting both public health and economic stability.
