COVID-19 vaccines saved nearly 20M lives in first year, study finds
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COVID-19 vaccination “fundamentally altered” the pandemic by saving nearly 20 million lives in the first year that vaccines were available, researchers found using a mathematical model.
“We wanted to conduct this study to understand how much worse the pandemic could have been without vaccination and, in doing so, demonstrate how many lives have been saved by generating and distributing vaccines as quickly as we did,” Oliver J. Watson, PhD, Schmidt Science Fellow at the MRC Centre for Global Infectious Disease Analysis of the Imperial College London, told Healio. “From an investment angle, these types of estimates will also underpin how we will evaluate the global vaccination campaign.”
He added that more importantly, these estimates show how many more deaths could have been prevented “if vaccines had been distributed faster and more equitably across the world.”
Watson and colleagues created a mathematical model of COVID-19 transmission, separately fitting vaccination to reported COVID-19 mortality and all-cause excess mortality. According to the study, the impact of COVID-19 vaccination programs was then determined by estimating the additional lives lost if no vaccines had been distributed.
Overall, the model estimated that vaccinations prevented 14.4 million COVID-19 deaths (95% credible interval [Crl], 13.7-15.9) in 185 countries and territories between Dec. 8, 2020, and Dec. 8, 2021, based on official reported COVID-19 deaths. This estimate grew to 19.8 million (95% Crl, 19.1-20.4) when researchers used excess deaths as an estimate of the “true extent of the pandemic,” representing a global reduction of 63% of total deaths during the first year of COVID-19 vaccination.
Further assessment of the data showed that in countries supported by the COVAX Advance Market Commitment — an effort to overcome the cost of vaccines and accelerate their access globally — 41% of excess mortality (7.4 million; 95% Crl, 6.8-7.7) was averted. However, in low-income countries, an additional 45% (95% CrI, 42-49) of deaths could have been averted had the 20% vaccination coverage target set by COVAX been met by each country. Watson added that had WHO’s target of ensuring that 40% of each country’s population was fully vaccinated by the end of 2021 was reached, one in five of deaths due to COVID-19 in low-income countries could have been prevented.
In a related commentary, Chad R. Wells, PhD, postdoctoral research associate at the Yale Center for Infectious Disease Modeling and Analysis, and colleagues wrote that the primary barrier preventing these countries from reaching the goal is lack of access to vaccines due to a combination of restricted supply and funding in resource-constrained settings. They explained that several high-income countries had secured advanced purchasing agreements with vaccine manufacturers.
“In the case of the United States, the number of vaccine doses purchased even before production was enough to fully vaccinate its entire population three times over,” they wrote, adding that in contrast, low-income countries were unable to pay the premium prices negotiated by high-income countries, delaying delivery and rollout.
“The inequitable distribution of vaccines has prolonged the pandemic and exacerbated the probability and frequency of the emergence of variants of concern,” they said.
Watson and colleagues concluded that the world is “incredibly fortunate” to have developed effective vaccines in record time and by delivering them as quickly as they have been.
“We have fundamentally altered the pandemic,” Watson said. “However, we must also remember the other reason why so many lives have been saved by vaccines, and that is due to everyone who made sacrifices over the last 2 years to help slow the spread of COVID-19.”
Reference:
Wells CR, et al. Lancet Infect Dis. 2022;doi:10.1016/S1473-3099(22)00417-0.
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