Comparison of Strategies and Incidence Thresholds for Vi Conjugate Vaccines Against Typhoid Fever: A Cost-effectiveness Modeling Study

Background: Typhoid fever remains a major public health problem globally. While new Vi conjugate vaccines hold promise for averting disease, the optimal programmatic delivery remains unclear. We aimed to identify the strategies and associated epidemiologic conditions under which Vi conjugate vaccines would be cost-effective. Methods: We developed a dynamic, age-structured transmission and cost-effectiveness model that simulated multiple vaccination strategies with a typhoid Vi conjugate vaccine from a societal perspective. We simulated 10-year vaccination programs with (1) routine immunization of infants (aged 50 cases/100000 (95% uncertainty interval, 40-75 cases) and when administered through the EPI plus a catch-up campaign in settings with an annual incidence of >130 cases/100000 (95% uncertainty interval, 50-395 cases). The incidence threshold was sensitive to the typhoid-related case-fatality rate, carrier contribution to transmission, vaccine characteristics, and country-specific economic threshold for cost-effectiveness. Conclusions: Typhoid Vi conjugate vaccines would be highly cost-effective in low-income countries in settings of moderate typhoid incidence (50 cases/100000 annually). These results were sensitive to case-fatality rates, underscoring the need to consider factors contributing to typhoid mortality (eg, healthcare access and antimicrobial resistance) in the global vaccination strategy