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Article History

Accepted: 28 August 2022

First Online: 26 September 2022

Declarations

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: This work was supported in part by Research Foundation-Flanders (JB), the Methusalem financing program of the Flemish government (ZP). The funding agreements ensured the authors’ independence in designing the study, interpreting the data, and writing and publishing the report.

: In 2019, P.B. participated in four half-day meetings organized by Pfizer Belgium. These meetings led to the development of a summary paper that was published in 2020 (Annemans et al., Value in Health 2020). For his participation, the University of Antwerp received compensation. P.B. received no personal fee for his participation. The University of Antwerp received grant money from the European Commission’s IMI programme (RESCEU; 2017–2021) to fund research on RSV conducted in The Centre for Health Economics Research & Modelling Infectious Diseases (CHERMID), which P.B. heads. The IMI programme involves many pharmaceutical companies in a public–private partnership. CHERMID also collaborated with the Centre for the Evaluation of Vaccination on a study on pneumococcal carriage in children (2015–2019), and that study was supported by a grant from Pfizer. In the period 2009–2019, the University of Antwerp received for its part-time “chair in evidence-based vaccinology” unrestricted grants from Pfizer and GSK. P.B. is promotor of the chair, but not the chair holder. By definition, the research agenda supported by the chair holder is determined and executed completely independent from the sponsors. The chair is no longer supported by private sponsors since January 2020.

: Not applicable.

: Not applicable.

: Not applicable.

: Not applicable.

: Not applicable.

: PB and JB prepared and approved the final version of the letter.

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