Abstract:
COVID-19 vaccines have reduced the negative health and economic impact of the COVID.19 pandemic by preventing severe disease, hospitalizations and deaths. In the new socio-economic normality, the COVID-19 vaccination strategy can be universal or high-risk and seasonal or not seasonal, and different vaccines can be used. The universal vaccination strategy can achieve greater health and herd immunity effects and it is associated with greater costs than the high-risk vaccination strategy. In each country, the optimal COVID-19 vaccination strategy must be decided by considering the advantages and disadvantages and assessing the costs, health effects and cost-effectiveness of the universal and high-risk vaccination strategies. The universal vaccination strategy should be implemented when the objective of the vaccination program is to achieve the highest health benefits from COVID-19 vaccination and when its incremental cost-effectiveness ratio is lower than EUR30,000−50,000 per QALY or LYG. The use of adapted vaccines targeting currently circulating variants of SARS-CoV-2 is necessary to avoid the immune escape of emerging variants.
Biography:
Pedro Plans-Rubió is member of the College of Physicians of Barcelona, Spain. MD, PhD, MSc in Health Economics, and MSc in Research Methods. Responsible for Health Registries at the Public Health Agency, Department of Health of Catalonia, Spain, until 2025. Specialized in Preventive Medicine and Public Health. Specialized in Labor Medicine. Expert of the European Commission for assessing public health and health economics projects. Member of the Group of Prioritization of Treatments (GIP), Heath Emergency Preparedness and Response (HERA), European Commission. Member of the non-communicable diseases risk factor Collaboration (NCD-RisC) research group. Member of the CIBER of Epidemiology and Public Health (CIBERESP), Instituto de Salud Carlos III, Madrid, Spain (until 2025). Editor-in Chief of Section “Vaccine Advancement, Efficacy and Safety” of the journal Vaccines. Editor of the journal Pharmacoeconomics Open. Associate Editor of Section "Cancer Immunity and Immunotherapy" of the journal Frontiers in Immunology and the journal Frontiers in Oncology. Dr. Plans-Rubió has developed and participated in epidemiological and seroepidemiologic studies of measles, mumps, rubella, pertussis, tetanus, diphtheria, polio, hepatitis A, hepatitis B, hepatitis C, tuberculosis, SARS-CoV-2 and influenza. He has authored and co-authored peer-reviewed publications on the evaluation of vaccines and vaccination programs, the epidemiology of infectious diseases, the epidemiology of factors associated with chronic diseases, the economic evaluation of drugs, and the strategies of prevention and control of vaccine-preventable diseases. Dr. Plans-Rubió is author of the book “Application of the cost-effectiveness of medicines and health programs in the health planning” (Elsevier).
