Ontology highlight
ABSTRACT: Introduction
Recent reviews summarize evidence that some vaccines have heterologous or non-specific effects (NSE), potentially offering protection against multiple pathogens. Numerous economic evaluations examine vaccines' pathogen-specific effects, but less than a handful focus on NSE. This paper addresses that gap by reporting economic evaluations of the NSE of oral polio vaccine (OPV) against under-five mortality and COVID-19.Materials and methods
We studied two settings: (1) reducing child mortality in a high-mortality setting (Guinea-Bissau) and (2) preventing COVID-19 in India. In the former, the intervention involves three annual campaigns in which children receive OPV incremental to routine immunization. In the latter, a susceptible-exposed-infectious-recovered model was developed to estimate the population benefits of two scenarios, in which OPV would be co-administered alongside COVID-19 vaccines. Incremental cost-effectiveness and benefit-cost ratios were modeled for ranges of intervention effectiveness estimates to supplement the headline numbers and account for heterogeneity and uncertainty.Results
For child mortality, headline cost-effectiveness was $650 per child death averted. For COVID-19, assuming OPV had 20% effectiveness, incremental cost per death averted was $23,000-65,000 if it were administered simultaneously with a COVID-19 vaccine <200 days into a wave of the epidemic. If the COVID-19 vaccine availability were delayed, the cost per averted death would decrease to $2600-6100. Estimated benefit-to-cost ratios vary but are consistently high.Discussion
Economic evaluation suggests the potential of OPV to efficiently reduce child mortality in high mortality environments. Likewise, within a broad range of assumed effect sizes, OPV (or another vaccine with NSE) could play an economically attractive role against COVID-19 in countries facing COVID-19 vaccine delays.Funding
The contribution by DTJ was supported through grants from Trond Mohn Foundation (BFS2019MT02) and Norad (RAF-18/0009) through the Bergen Center for Ethics and Priority Setting.
SUBMITTER: Chang AY
PROVIDER: S-EPMC9580701 | biostudies-literature | 2022
REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature
Chang Angela Y AY Aaby Peter P Avidan Michael S MS Benn Christine S CS Bertozzi Stefano M SM Blatt Lawrence L Chumakov Konstantin K Khader Shabaana A SA Kottilil Shyam S Nekkar Madhav M Netea Mihai G MG Sparrow Annie A Jamison Dean T DT
Frontiers in public health 20221005
<h4>Introduction</h4>Recent reviews summarize evidence that some vaccines have heterologous or non-specific effects (NSE), potentially offering protection against multiple pathogens. Numerous economic evaluations examine vaccines' pathogen-specific effects, but less than a handful focus on NSE. This paper addresses that gap by reporting economic evaluations of the NSE of oral polio vaccine (OPV) against under-five mortality and COVID-19.<h4>Materials and methods</h4>We studied two settings: (1) ...[more]