COVID Vaccines Returned Up to $809 for Every Dollar Spent in Their First Year, Global Study Finds

NEW YORK, Nov. 9 (TodayViralUSA) — Every dollar spent developing and distributing COVID-19 vaccines returned between $59 and $809 in health and economic value during the shots’ first year of use, according to a new global analysis published in the journal PLOS Medicine.

The study, reported Nov. 5, concludes that the vaccines effectively paid back their development costs within a year of becoming available.

$79 billion in, trillions out

Researchers estimated that developing and delivering the vaccines cost more than $79 billion. Against that, they put the value of the health and economic benefits between December 2020 and December 2021 at $6.4 trillion to $64 trillion.

The calculation counted extra years of life, avoided hospitalizations, improved work productivity and other health care costs that were averted. The vaccines are credited with saving between 14 million and 20 million lives in their first year alone, the researchers said, but their economic value had not previously been assessed on a global scale.

“Our study provides evidence that the unprecedented, rapid investments made into COVID-19 vaccines early in the pandemic paid off massively both in health and economic benefits,” senior researcher Mark Jit, a professor of global health at NYU School of Global Public Health, said in a news release.

Public money changed the equation

Jit noted that, unlike most vaccines, COVID shots were not purely a private-sector bet: the United States, the European Union, China and other governments poured in funding to reduce the risk for manufacturers.

The researchers focused on the first year of availability because that was when the shots had the greatest impact, with most people still lacking immunity to the new coronavirus.

Uneven benefits

High-income countries gained the most, helped by early access, higher uptake, faster rollouts and older populations at greater risk of severe illness. Many low- and middle-income countries did not get widespread access until late 2021, after large numbers of people had already been infected.

“The lesson is there should be a way to get this vaccine to countries that need it faster,” Jit said. The authors concluded that rapid vaccine development, and fair global distribution, should be prioritized before and during future health crises.