The value of vaccinations

Beyond being a public health intervention, vaccinations strengthen communities and help grow the economy.

Vaccines save lives every day. The World Health Organization estimates they prevent between 3.5 and 5 million a year – equivalent to saving one life every ten seconds.¹ At the same time, thanks to the polio vaccine, there are an estimated 20 million people across the globe able to walk today who would otherwise be paralysed.²

Vaccinations are some of the most significant medical developments in our history. However, rather than celebrating their immense worth, we are seeing increasing scepticism through questioning the value of vaccines and even removing investment. At a time when vaccine hesitancy is rising, and more working days are lost due to illness, the need to communicate the value of vaccines has never been greater.³

There is a positive message, however. Extensive research by Royal Society for Public Health (RSPH) shows that people between the ages of 11 and 70 know vaccines are important to their health.⁴ Moreover, concerns about side effects or how vaccines work can be answered with clear and concise evidence.

The value of a vaccine goes far beyond protecting one individual. As a society, we all feel the benefits of mass vaccine uptake. They help protect the NHS, diminish the risk of antimicrobial resistance and ultimately, contribute to the country’s economic growth.⁵

Data from the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) shows that the Flu vaccine alone prevented around 100,000 hospitalisations last winter. This means that, every day, around 820 fewer people needed a hospital bed in winter.⁶

More UKHSA data showed that the vaccine against respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), a virus that can cause serious pneumonia in babies and adults aged over 75, also reduced hospitalisations.⁷ The RSV vaccine prevented close to one in three people in England from needing a hospital bed when they contracted the virus.⁸ This was even higher in Scotland, where nearly three in five eligible people were spared days on hospital wards.⁹ Hospitals will always be busier in winter. Fewer hospital beds in use for preventable infectious diseases frees NHS capacity to treat patients with other conditions year-round.

The benefits of vaccines extend beyond hospitals, easing pressure on GP surgeries too. The number of GP appointments needed for people struggling with respiratory conditions, such as the flu, RSV, and pneumonia, decreases when more eligible people get immunised.¹⁰ The reason is quite simple: people who are vaccinated tend not to get ill or if they do, their cases are not so severe.¹¹

Understanding the significance of vaccines to the NHS is straightforward. A value that goes overlooked is the link between antimicrobial resistance and vaccinations. The logic is simple: more people vaccinated means fewer cases of infectious diseases.¹² Since people are not infected by these microbes in the first place, these microorganisms have fewer opportunities to mutate into resistant strains.¹³

Fewer people getting sick could also reduce the need for antibiotic use. Put simply, the less often microbes are exposed to antibiotics, the less opportunity they have to become resistant. The impact of vaccines in creating this virtuous circle is significant: research led by the WHO has shown that better use of vaccines could reduce global antibiotic use by 22% or hundreds of millions of doses.¹⁴

The fact that vaccinations have a positive impact on the economy and contribute to the country’s GDP growth may come as a surprise. We tend to think of vaccines as a public health intervention, not as a medicine with an extraordinary knock-on effect for our economy.

The most immediate connection between vaccines and the economy relates to people’s productivity. Research has shown that over half of the British workforce works while ill with flu, resulting with their productivity falling by up to 46 per cent.¹⁵ This is called presenteeism, when people show up to work but are unable to work at full capacity.

There are quick wins that can be deployed in the workplace, as we have found in RSPH research on health and wellbeing. Employers can provide simple solutions that enhance workplace health, such as offering an annual flu vaccine to their workers. Flu alone is one of the main reasons why employees miss a day of work. Research from the University of Cambridge shows that 4.8 million days of work are lost in the UK each year to flu, costing our economy £644m.¹⁶ To put this figure in context, this is similar to the extra money the government will allocate to local authorities with social care responsibilities in 2025-26.¹⁷

We can’t divorce this from the broader crisis of ill health in our workforce: one-in-five people of working age is reporting a work-limiting health condition. We are calling for UK workplaces to become key settings for delivering public health interventions. Vaccines are a simple and cost-effective intervention that can be a key part of solving the problem.

Investing in vaccine R&D is also highly beneficial. Vaccine research has contributed significantly to the advancement of many areas of medicine, biology, and chemistry, and has also helped build better laboratories and manufacturing facilities. All of this helps drive economic growth. The Department for Science, Innovation and Technology itself recognised that for every £1 invested in R&D, £7 is generated in net benefits to the UK economy.¹⁸

High-quality research and the development of new vaccines don’t happen overnight. It takes time, commitment, investment and a policy environment that supports the aims. We also need to share the benefits of vaccines more often, which is why publications such as this are so important and why we must, at every opportunity, promote the positive impact of vaccines on our health, the NHS, our economy, and our country.

This article first appeared in The UK’s mRNA opportunity: Growth, resilience, leadership, a New Statesman report, funded by Moderna. Participants were not paid for their involvement, all views and opinions are their own and have not been influenced by Moderna.

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