The most reliable approach to saving lives in the continuing global pandemic is to ensure that individuals are vaccinated against COVID-19.

In the first year of its US rollout, the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine had dramatic health and economic impact, as recently documented in a peer-reviewed study published in the journal Medical Economics.

The vaccine, which is the most extensively used against COVID-19 in the United States, is estimated to have prevented 8.7 million symptomatic instances of the virus, 690,000 hospitalizations, and more than 110,000 deaths in 2021.

The vaccine is also credited with saving more than $30 billion in healthcare costs and over $40 billion in lost productivity.

The Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine was the first COVID-19 vaccine to become available in the US and, according to estimates from the US public health agency, the Centers for Disease Control, was given to almost six in ten citizens who were fully vaccinated in 2021.

The study’s authors – all of whom received funding from Pfizer, either as direct employees, consultants or employees of firms paid by Pfizer – used a model, real-world and trial data to estimate how many symptomatic COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations and deaths would have occurred that year if the vaccine had not been available.

They also estimated how much these cases would have cost the healthcare system and the wider economy.

Data fed into the model included information on the numbers vaccinated, the efficacy of the vaccine in different age groups, as well as the probability of catching COVID-19, developing symptoms and being hospitalised.

The effects of long COVID were also taken into account, as were the number of working days likely to have been lost due to short-term illness and the economic cost of premature deaths.

The results not only led to health benefits for millions of people, but also an estimated $30.4 billion of savings in healthcare costs and $43.7 billion of savings in productivity losses.

“The analyses show that the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine contributed substantial public health impact in the US in 2021, and had a deep effect on the trajectory of the pandemic. It was estimated to prevent millions of COVID-19 symptomatic cases, thousands of hospitalisations and deaths, and generated billions in societal economic value in the US in 2021,” says researcher Manuela Di Fusco, of Pfizer’s health economics and outcomes research team.

She adds that the results, “highlight the opportunity to continue widespread vaccination uptake to prevent COVID-19 related disease and generate societal benefits”.

The research team lists several limitations of the study, which they say could have led to their figures being an underestimate.  These include not factoring in the potential of the vaccine to reduce transmission, the severity of cases and the overall impact of long COVID.

They also acknowledge their results can’t be generalized to other COVID-19 vaccine brands, indications and populations not specifically analyzed. Moreover, the model excluded the impact of the Omicron variant which emerged in the US at the end of the study period.

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