Estimating the Delivery Costs of COVID-19 Vaccination Using the COVID-19 Vaccine Introduction and Deployment Costing (CVIC) Tool: the Lao People's Democratic Republic Experience.

The COVID-19 Vaccine Introduction and deployment Costing (CVIC) tool was developed to assist countries to estimate incremental financial costs to roll out COVID-19 vaccines. This article describes the purposes, assumptions and methods used in the CVIC tool and presents the estimated financial costs of delivering COVID-19 vaccines in the Lao People’s Democratic Republic (Lao PDR). From March to September 2021, a multidisciplinary team in Lao PDR was involved in the costing exercise of the National Deployment and Vaccination Plan for COVID-19 vaccines to develop potential scenarios and gather inputs using the CVIC tool. Financial costs of introducing COVID-19 vaccines for 3 years from 2021 to 2023 were projected from the government perspective. All costs were collected in 2021 Lao Kip and presented in United States dollar. From 2021 to 2023, the financial cost required to vaccinate all adults in Lao PDR with primary series of COVID-19 vaccines (1 dose for Ad26.COV2.S (recombinant) vaccine and 2 doses for the other vaccine products) is estimated to be US6.44 million (excluding vaccine costs) and additionally US1.44 million and US1.62 million to include teenagers and children, respectively. These translate to financial costs of US0.79–0.81 per dose, which decrease to US0.6 when two boosters are introduced to the population. Capital and operational cold-chain costs contributed 15–34