A systematic review of the economic evaluation for Covid-19 vaccination for age groups elderly and adult in European countries

Abstract

Aim: This systematic review aimed to identify empirical evidence of the cost-effectiveness of Covid-19 vaccination programs within European countries among elderly and adult age groups. The result further acted as a parameter to assess the cost-effectiveness of a similar program in Sweden. Method: A literature search was conducted in the Medline, Embase, PscyInfo, CINAHL and Tuft CEA, Cochrane and INAHTA databases in February 2023 with PICO as inclusion criteria. The inclusion criteria are economic evaluation articles with age-group separation, age-group based vaccinated European residents as population, Covid-19 vaccination as intervention and non vaccinated European residents as control. The search was conducted by two reviewers with SBU search strategy. Handsearch was done on relevant websites and reference lists of selected articles. It was continued with title/abstract screening, full-text screening, and quality and risk of bias assessment with SBU checklist. The reporting follows guidelines from the Mastrigt articles. Results: The screening resulted in 5,720 reports, title/abstract screening yielded 160 reports and after full text screening, four articles remained. Two articles with moderate quality were selected for further analysis. The economic evidence indicated that Covid-19 vaccination is cost-effective in the elderly age group. Transferability to Sweden was hindered by the contrast difference in the data source. Conclusion: According to reviewed studies, the Covid-19 vaccination policy in the elderly population is cost-effective. The inclusion of the adult age group in the program depends on the vaccines' prices for it to be cost-effective. In house health economic research is needed to assess the cost-effectiveness of the Swedish Covid-19 vaccination program.