Winter viruses are back. And as the launch of the annual seasonal flu vaccination campaign approaches, on October 26, France Info asked Olivier Véran about his coverage by Social Security. The flu vaccine “will be reimbursed […]. There will be 10 million vaccines from the first day of the campaign, but there will be many more vaccines available over the weeks, ”said the Minister of Health on Wednesday.
🗣️ Sanofi flu vaccine: “It will be reimbursed”, assures Olivier Véran. “The financial impact of a flu in France is more than a billion euros.”
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– franceinfo (@franceinfo) October 13, 2021
Before adding, in response to a question on the cost of this vaccine: “You know, the financial impact of an influenza, of a somewhat strong influenza in France, it is more than 1 billion euros. […]. You have prevention expenses [comme la vaccination], which are lower than the processing costs. On the one hand, you save lives, on the other hand you count the sick in the hospital so the choice is quickly made. “
An order of magnitude representative of reality or rather exaggerated? We take stock.
FAKE OFF
The questions surrounding the cost of an influenza epidemic for the economy are not new: the Group of expertise and information on influenza (GEIG) carried out several field surveys on this subject between 1996 and 2002, as well as in 2006.
“Each year in France, influenza affects 2 to 8 million people of all ages. […] During an epidemic period, the millions of annual cases of influenza occurring in France cause absenteeism estimated at 2 million working days for low epidemics and up to 12 million working days for intense epidemics, which can be responsible for disorganization. of economic and social life (hospitals, schools, industries, etc.) ”, detailed the GEIG on his site.
The data collected on this occasion thus enabled him to assess, from all of the individual cases counted, the cost of influenza “in outpatient medicine (excluding hospitalizations and production losses)” at an amount between “between 230 and 840 million euros “according to” the intensity of the epidemic “and underlining that” the reality is very probably superior “to these evaluations” minimalist “.
Between 900 million and 1 billion euros per epidemic in recent years
More recently, Europe 1 had assessed, in a survey, the cost of the 2015 influenza epidemic to 1 billion euros. In detail, this amount included the 150 million costs for Social Security for the care of 3 million people with influenza, the 400 to 500 million euros of costs induced by absences in companies (replacements , overtime …), and finally 300 million euros of lost earnings for the State due to the drop in production and therefore consumption.
At the start of 2017, Frédéric Bizard, health economist, estimated with Challenges that the last influenza epidemic to date had represented a cost of “about 900 million euros”, in the average of a “normal” year. Enough to encourage more and more companies to take the lead by carrying out in-house vaccination campaigns,
as reported by LCI the same year.