COVID-19 Vaccination Scenarios: A Cost-Effectiveness Analysis for Turkey

Abstract

As of March 2021, COVID-19 has claimed the lives of more than 2.7 million people worldwide. Vaccination has started in most countries around the world. In this study, we estimated the cost-effectiveness of strategies for COVID-19 vaccination for Turkey compared to a baseline in the absence of vaccination and imposed measures by using an enhanced SIRD (Susceptible, Infectious, Recovered, Death) model and various scenarios for the first year after vaccination. The results showed that vaccination is cost-effective from a health care perspective, with an incremental cost-effectiveness ratio (ICER) of 511 USD/QALY and 1045 USD/QALY if vaccine effectiveness on transmission is equal or reduced to only 50% of effectiveness on disease, respectively, at the 90% baseline effectiveness of the vaccine. From a societal perspective, cost savings were estimated for both scenarios. Other results further showed that the minimum required vaccine uptake to be cost-effective would be at least 30%. Sensitivity and scenario analyses, as well as the iso-ICER curves, showed that the results were quite robust and that major changes in cost-effectiveness outcomes cannot be expected. We can conclude that COVID-19 vaccination in Turkey is highly cost-effective or even cost-saving.

Epidemiological impact and cost-effectiveness analysis of COVID-19 vaccination in Kenya

“…These findings mirror cost-effectiveness studies of COVID-19 vaccination done in Turkey and Pakistan that found that although COVID-19 vaccination strategies were cost-effective from a health system's perspective, they were cost-saving from a societal perspective. [39,41] This is in line with arguments from studies that estimate the public health value and impact of vaccination, which argue the need to broaden the perspectives for costeffectiveness analysis of vaccines, as their impact is far-reaching, especially in the context of a pandemic. [42][43][44] These findings have implications for COVID-19 vaccination policy in Kenya and other low-and middleincome countries (LMIC) settings with comparable demographic and COVID-19 epidemiological profiles.…”

COVID-19 Vaccines Cost-Effectiveness Analysis: A Scenario for Iran

“…The result of cost-effectiveness analysis in Turkey demonstrates that any vaccine with an effectiveness of more than 80% and coverage of more than 30% would be cost saving. With coverage of about 50%, the vaccine's effectiveness should be at least around 55% to be cost-saving [63]. In another study in South Africa, it has been shown that coverage of 40% of the population, which would prevent more than 73,000 deaths.…”

Value-based pricing of a COVID-19 vaccine

“…A few studies on the monetary value of COVID-19 vaccines have been published so far (e.g., Hagens et al, 2021 ; Kohli, Maschio, Becker, & Weinstein, 2021 ; Marco-Franco, Pita-Barros, González-de-Julián, Sabat, & Vivas-Consuelo, 2021 ; Padula et al, 2021 ; Sandmann et al, 2021 ). Studies seem to concur that the clinical and economic value of COVID-19 vaccines is positive.…”

“…In addition, differences exists in terms of healthcare systems, perspectives, methods, comparators, and prevailing coronavirus variants. Both a Turkish ( Hagens et al, 2021 ) and a U.K. study ( Sandmann et al, 2021 ) used a dynamic transmission model and – similar to this study – a societal perspective. While the Turkish study used no intervention as a comparator, the U.K. study considered a lockdown strategy.…”