Cost-effectiveness analysis of vaccination against COVID-19 in China.

Introduction: Since September 2020, Chinese populations aged > 3 years have been encouraged to receive a two-dose inoculation with vaccines against coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). This study aims to evaluate the cost-effectiveness of the current vaccination strategy amongst the general population in mainland China from a societal perspective. Methods: In this study, we construct a decision tree with Markov models to compare the economic and health consequences of the current vaccination strategy versus a no-vaccination scenario, over a time horizon of one year and an annual discount rate of 5%. Transition probabilities, health utilities, healthcare costs, and productivity losses are estimated from literature. Outcome measures include infection rates, death rates, quality-adjusted life years (QALYs), and costs. The incremental cost-effectiveness ratio (ICER) is then calculated to evaluate the cost-effectiveness of the current vaccination strategy, and both one-way deterministic sensitivity analysis and probabilistic sensitivity analysis (PSA) are applied to assess the impact of uncertainties on results. Results: Our simulation indicates that compared with a no-vaccination scenario, vaccination amongst the general population in mainland China would reduce the infection rate from 100% to 45.3% and decrease the death rate from 6.8% to 3.1%. Consequently, the strategy will lead to a saving of 37,664.77 CNY (US$5,256.70) and a gain of 0.50 QALYs per person per year on average (lifetime QALY and productivity loss due to immature death are included). The cost-saving for each QALY gain is 74,895.69 CNY (US$10,452.85). Result of the PSA indicates that vaccination is the dominating strategy with a probability of 97.9%, and the strategy is cost-effective with a probability of 98.5% when the willingness-to-pay (WTP) is 72,000 CNY (US$10,048.71) per QALY. Conclusion: Compared with a no-vaccination scenario, vaccination among the general population in mainland China is the dominating strategy from a societal perspective. The conclusion is considered robust in the sensitivity analyses.

Modeling the effects of vaccination, nucleic acid testing, and face mask wearing interventions against COVID-19 in large sports events.

The transmission of SARS-CoV-2 leads to devastating COVID-19 infections around the world, which has affected both human health and the development of industries dependent on social gatherings. Sports events are one of the subgroups facing great challenges. The uncertainty of COVID-19 transmission in large-scale sports events is a great barrier to decision-making with regard to reopening auditoriums. Policymakers and health experts are trying to figure out better policies to balance audience experiences and COVID-19 infection control. In this study, we employed the generalized SEIR model in conjunction with the Wells-Riley model to estimate the effects of vaccination, nucleic acid testing, and face mask wearing on audience infection control during the 2021 Chinese Football Association Super League from 20 April to 5 August. The generalized SEIR modeling showed that if the general population were vaccinated by inactive vaccines at an efficiency of 0.78, the total number of infectious people during this time period would decrease from 43,455 to 6,417. We assumed that the general population had the same odds ratio of entering the sports stadiums and becoming the audience. Their infection probabilities in the stadium were further estimated by the Wells-Riley model. The results showed that if all of the 30,000 seats in the stadium were filled by the audience, 371 audience members would have become infected during the 116 football games in the 2021 season. The independent use of vaccination and nucleic acid testing would have decreased this number to 79 and 118, respectively. The combined use of nucleic acid testing and vaccination or face mask wearing would have decreased this number to 14 and 34, respectively. The combined use of all three strategies could have further decreased this number to 0. According to the modeling results, policymakers can consider the combined use of vaccination, nucleic acid testing, and face mask wearing to protect audiences from infection when holding sports events, which could create a balance between audience experiences and COVID-19 infection control.