In April I posted an OEN story reporting on a study by the Commonwealth Fund estimating that Covid vaccinations had prevented more than 2 million deaths in the US from the start of vaccination through March, 2022.
We now have open access to a separate study, appearing 6/23/22 in the UK's premier medical journal, the Lancet, which used a different but equally detailed and sophisticated model to estimate lives saved by Covid vaccinations in 185 countries, including the United States. Its results strongly support the earlier estimate of more than two million American lives saved by the Covid vaccines.
The Lancet article reports that in just the first year vaccines were available, they saved 20 million lives worldwide, including just under two million lives in the US.
The US has lost over one million citizens to Covid. If the vaccines had not been available, that figure could easily have been three million. Currently 69 percent of the US population is fully vaccinated. If more people had chosen to get vaccinated, hundreds of thousands of lives could have been saved.
Worldwide, an estimated 6.4 million people have died of Covid (here and here). Without the vaccines, that number could well have been 26 million.
A gentle reminder: Covid is still around, still making people sick, and still causing many hospitalizations and deaths. There's still time and reason to get vaccinated if you haven't, or to get a booster shot when needed.
(Article changed on Jun 27, 2022 at 1:12 PM EDT)
(Article changed on Jun 28, 2022 at 3:23 AM EDT)
