How new ways to prevent RSV are saving lives and money.

From Marketplace, I'm Sabri Beneshore, in for David Brancaccio.

RSV is a respiratory virus that can be especially harmful to babies, and this past winter,

a couple new ways of preventing it became widely available.

They include a vaccine given in pregnancy to mothers

and antibodies given to newborns. And the two together led to a major drop in RSV hospitalizations

among infants. That is according to a new CDC study. Daniel Ackerman looked into what it means

for public health and for the health care economy. RSV researchers are pretty excited about how well the new interventions have worked.

Natasha Halasa, a professor of pediatrics at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, calls it.

Very, very good news.

This is like, it's so exciting in the RSV role because for years we've been saying it's the

most common cause of

hospitalization. Now though, the number of infant hospitalizations is on the decline, says

Halasa, especially for the youngest patients who often cost more to treat. The highest reduction

was in infants that were zero to two months. And keeping babies healthy is obviously a win for families.

Angela Bankston, a professor of epidemiology at Emory, says it also...

Is it a win for the American taxpayer?

That's because 61% of infant hospitalizations for RSV are paid by Medicaid,

collectively costing more than $350 million a year. And Bankston says the RSV are paid by Medicaid, collectively costing more than $350 million a year.

And Bankston says the RSV interventions are still so new, only about two-thirds of eligible infants

got them last year. Think of how much more we might be able to reduce if we increase coverage

overall. There are some harder to measure costs of RSV that could be addressed, too, says Natasha

...