The global health and economic benefits of covid-19 vaccines came to between $5 trillion and $38 trillion in their first year, showing an incredible return on investment
By Michael Le Page
15 September 2025
People receiving covid-19 vaccines in Bangkok, Thailand in 2021
AFP via Getty Images
The covid-19 vaccines cost $79 billion to develop and deliver globally, but provided health and economic benefits worth between $5 trillion and $38 trillion globally in the first year alone, based on avoided infections, hospitalisations and deaths. That is a return on investment of between $60 and $475 per dollar invested.
“These studies show the benefits that vaccines have, not just in terms of saving lives, but also that there is a strong economic argument,” says Oliver Watson at Imperial College London. “Hopefully, this will highlight the value of continued investment in vaccine research and development.”
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Watson and his colleagues didn’t attempt to estimate how much higher global economic growth was as a result of the vaccines than it would have been otherwise. Rather, their work is an estimate of the economic values of the health benefits, based on their previous 2022 study that estimated that covid-19 vaccines averted more than 14 million deaths in their first year of use.
For avoided infections, the team estimated how many days of work lost to illness were averted and the productivity value of those work days. For avoided hospitalisations, the team estimated the costs of the healthcare that wasn’t required.
For deaths, the team estimated how many years of life were saved and the value of those years based on a measure of either how much society values years of life or how much people are willing to pay for an extra year of life – a standard approach used in many other studies.