Nearly 20 million lives were saved from COVID-19 vaccines in their first year, but even more deaths could have been prevented if international vaccine targets had been met, researchers said Thursday.
Nearly 20 million lives were saved from COVID-19 vaccines in their first year, but even more deaths could have been prevented if international vaccine targets had been met, researchers said Thursday.
On December 8, 2020, a retired salesman in England received his first injection into what would become a global vaccination campaign. Over the next 12 months, more than 4.3 billion people worldwide signed up for vaccines.
The effort, albeit overshadowed by ongoing inequalities, has prevented deaths on an unimaginable scale, said Oliver Watson of Imperial College London, who is leading the new modeling.
“Catastrophic would be the first word that comes to mind,” Watson said of the outcome, if no coronavirus vaccines were available. The findings “measure how much worse a pandemic could be if we didn’t have these vaccines.”
The researchers used data from 185 countries to estimate that vaccines prevented 4.2 million deaths from COVID-19 in India, 1.9 million in the United States, 1 million in Brazil, 631,000 in France and 507,000 in France. United Kingdom.
An additional 600,000 deaths would have been prevented if the World Health Organization’s goal of 40% vaccination by the end of 2021 had been met, according to a study published Thursday in the journal Lancet Infectious Diseases.
The main finding – 19.8 million COVID-19 deaths have been prevented – is based on estimates of how many more deaths than usual have occurred over time. Using only reported deaths from COVID-19, the same model resulted in 14.4 million vaccine-prevented deaths.
London scientists have ruled out China because of uncertainty about the effect of the pandemic on deaths there and its vast population.
The study has other limitations. The researchers did not include how the virus could have mutated differently in the absence of vaccines. And they did not consider how blocking or wearing masks would change if vaccines were not available.
Another modeling group used a different approach to estimate that 16.3 million COVID-19 deaths were prevented by vaccines. This work from the Seattle Institute for Health Indicators and Evaluation has not been published.
In the real world, people wear masks more often when the cases increase, said Ali Moqdad of the institute, and the delta wave of 2021 without vaccines would provoke a serious political reaction.
“We may not agree on the number as scientists, but we all agree that vaccines against COVID have saved many lives,” Moqdad said.
The results highlight both the achievements and shortcomings of the vaccination campaign, said Adam Finn of Bristol Medical School in England, who, like Mokdad, was not involved in the study.
“Even though we did pretty well this time – we saved millions and millions of lives – we could have done better and we need to do better in the future,” Finn said.
Funding comes from several groups, including the WHO; The Medical Research Council of the United Kingdom; Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance; and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
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The PA reporter for health and science, Havovi Todd, contributed.
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The Associated Press’s Department of Health and Science receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
Carla K. Johnson, Associated Press
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