A new study has revealed that the Pfizer Covid vaccine prevented over 110,000 deaths since its widespread implementation in the US.
The Pfizer Covid vaccine was administered across the US in 2021 to reduce the devastation caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus. Novel research has now highlighted the staggering success of the vaccine, illuminating that it helped to avoid 8.7 million symptomatic cases of COVID-19, 690,000 hospitalisations, and more than 110,000 deaths. The vaccine was also found to have saved over $30 billion in healthcare costs and over $40 billion in lost productivity.
The findings of the peer-reviewed study are published in the Journal of Medical Economics.
Impacts of the Pfizer Covid vaccine
The Pfizer Covid vaccine was the first immunisation against COVID-19 to become available in the US, with estimates from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention suggesting that around six in ten US citizens were given the vaccine in 2021.
For their study, the researchers, all of which either received funding from Pfizer as a direct employee, consultant, or employee of a firm paid by Pfizer, utilised a model and real-world and trial data to analyse how the vaccine impacted COVID-19.
The data was employed to determine how many symptomatic COVID-19 cases, hospitalisations, and deaths would have occurred if the Pfizer Covid vaccine was not available. Additionally, the team quantified the economic impacts and healthcare costs these cases would have incurred.
The data utilised in the model included information on the number of people vaccinated, vaccine efficacy across different age groups, and the probability of catching COVID-19, developing symptoms and being hospitalised. The researchers also accounted for the effects of long Covid, the number of working days estimated to be lost due to short-term illness and the economic cost of premature deaths.
The results from the model highlighted not only health benefits for millions of people, such as 8.7 million symptomatic cases of the disease being avoided, but also that the vaccine prevented over 690,000 hospitalisations and 110,000 deaths. The vaccine also saved $30.4b in healthcare costs and $43.7b in productivity losses.
Manuela Di Fusco, of Pfizer’s health economics and outcomes research team, said: “The analyses show that the Pfizer Covid 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.”
Study limitations
The team explained that there are multiple limitations of their study, which may have led to an underestimate in their figures. The limitations include not factoring in the vaccine’s potential to reduce transmission, the severity of the cases and the overall impact of long Covid. Moreover, the results cannon be generalised to other Covid vaccines and indications and populations were not specifically analysed. The researchers’ model also did not include the impact of the Omicron variant, which became prevalent in the US at the end of the study.
