RSV Vaccines Projected to Protect Infants and Seniors This Season
During the fall and winter, respiratory illnesses like influenza and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) spread widely and can cause severe illness, especially among vulnerable populations. Those at risk of severe infection include older adults, who can be protected with the use of RSV vaccines, and infants and young children, who can be protected with the use of maternal vaccination and monoclonal antibodies. Based on the latest projections from the RSV Scenario Modeling Hub, between July 2024 and June 2025, these interventions are expected to avert thousands of cases of severe disease that would require hospitalization, relieving some of the pressure on a health system already burdened by higher-than-usual numbers of pertussis and Mycoplasma pneumonia and seasonal epidemics of COVID-19 and influenza.
The 2024-2025 season RSV projections explored five scenarios based on different timings of interventions and both optimistic and pessimistic assumptions about the waning of vaccine-induced immunity among seniors aged 60 and older. These projections were generated using twelve independent models to predict how vaccination efforts can impact RSV hospitalizations in the U.S. between July 28, 2024, and June 7, 2025. The most optimistic scenario, assuming early infant protection and limited waning of protection among seniors, projects that RSV interventions could avert 17% (29,300) of RSV hospitalizations, including a reduction of 31% (14,300) in hospitalizations among infants and 22% (13,000) among seniors. These projections also show that across all scenarios, the hospitalization burden of the 2024-25 RSV season is likely to be significantly lower than that of last season.
In the U.S., RSV infections cause an average of 58,000 hospitalizations among children under five and about 14,000 deaths among seniors over 65 each year (source: NIAID), putting a large strain on our medical system. RSV interventions, including vaccination and the widespread use of monoclonal antibodies for infants, are thus an important tool to reduce disease burden and free up hospital resources to treat other seasonal respiratory illnesses. “We knew these new monoclonals and vaccines had great potential for impact, and now we are starting to see it,” says Dr. Shaun Truelove, one of the co-leads of this work. He continued, “In only 2 years since these products were approved, we are expecting to see them prevent a third of hospitalizations that would have otherwise occurred due to RSV this season. These interventions have immense potential to reduce RSV associated burden even more with increased uptake and optimized timing."
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