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Study: Early, Aggressive Pandemic Vax Saves Lives & Money

 


# 3805

 

We get a press release today from the Stanford University Medical Center heralding a study which will appear in the October 6th issue of Annals of Internal Medicine, which models the potential savings - both in lives and monetary costs - derived from an aggressive pandemic vaccination program in a New York sized city.

 

The researchers calculate that even if today’s vaccine had roughly the same level of adverse effects as the much maligned 1976 swine flu vaccine (1 death in 1.6 million doses), a city the size of New York might see 2 vaccine related fatalities (40% uptake rate), but potentially save roughly 2,000 lives. 

 

The researchers also looked at a hypothetical H5N1 pandemic vaccination program as well, one that would require 2 doses of an adjuvanted vaccine. 

 

Follow the link to read the press release in its entirety.

 

Stanford analyses of flu pandemics project savings from earlier vaccinations

STANFORD, Calif. - In a city the size of New York, starting a vaccination campaign a few weeks earlier could save almost 600 lives and over $150 million, according to a study by scientists at the Stanford University School of Medicine.

 

The study, to be published online Oct. 6 in the Annals of Internal Medicine, modeled a pandemic in a hypothetical urban area with a population and demographic characteristics mirroring New York City's.

 

It concluded that under a very broad range of assumptions, vaccinating this October would save more money and lives than in November, and that vaccinating at either time was better than no campaign at all. An October campaign would avert 2,051 deaths and save $469 million, while a November campaign would prevent 1,468 deaths and save $302 million relative to doing nothing.

 

"To put it simply, the most cost-saving and life-saving strategy is to vaccinate as many people as possible as soon as possible," said the study's first author, Nayer Khazeni, MD, an instructor of medicine in pulmonary and critical care. She is also an associate at Stanford's Center for Health Policy and Center for Primary Care and Outcomes Research.

 

Citing New York City's 1976 mass-vaccination program against swine flu, the investigators presumed that a substantial fraction of the city's population could be reached in a 10-day campaign. Their sophisticated mathematical model incorporated numerous alternative assumptions regarding the new viral strain's lethality and transmission rate, the vaccine's effectiveness and side-effect profile and the likelihood that people would limit their social contacts as cases multiplied.

 

Public health officials have noted that it may not be possible to provide H1N1 vaccine on a mass scale in October. Earlier in the summer, up to 120 million doses of vaccine were expected to be ready in mid-October, enough to inoculate 40 percent of the U.S. population. Although the projected number of doses available by then has been scaled back to 45 million, enough for 15 percent of the U.S population, the study makes a compelling case for the benefits of vaccinating sooner rather than later.

 

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