Over 25 lakh deaths averted worldwide due to COVID-19 vaccinations, study estimates
Findings published in The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) Health Forum "clearly demonstrate a major overall benefit from COVID-19 vaccination during the years 2020-2024", with 90 per cent of the life-saving benefits secured for the world's older adults.
Researchers from the Catholic University of Milan, Italy, and US' Stanford University analysed publicly available data on worldwide population to estimate number of people who died due to COVID-19 and whether they died before or after getting vaccinated.
"We compared this data with the estimated data modelled in the absence of COVID-19 vaccination and were then able to calculate the numbers of people who were saved by COVID-19 vaccines and the years of life gained as a result of them," author Angelo Maria Pezzullo, researcher in general and applied hygiene, Catholic University of Milan, said.
The team also found that the 82 per cent of the
lives saved by vaccines
involved people getting the shots before encountering the virus, 57 per cent during the Omicron period, and 90 per cent of the lives saved involved people aged 60 years and older.
COVID-19 vaccinations
also helped save 14.8 million years of life -- a year of life saved for every 900 vaccine shots administered, the researchers said.
Further, about three-quarters of the years of life saved were related to people aged 60 and above.
"Before ours, several studies tried to estimate lives saved by vaccines with different models and in different periods or parts of the world," author Stefania Boccia, professor of general and applied hygiene at the Catholic University of Milan, said.
However, "this one is the most comprehensive because it is based on worldwide data, it also covers the Omicron period, it also calculates the number of years of life that was saved, and it is based on fewer assumptions about the pandemic trend," Boccia said.
The authors wrote, "In the main analysis, more than 2.5 million deaths were averted (one death averted per 5,400 vaccine doses administered). Eighty-two percent were among people vaccinated before any infection, 57 per cent were during the Omicron period, and 90 per cent pertained to people 60 years or older."
In an invited commentary article, published in JAMA Health Forum, Monica Gandhi from the University of California San Francisco's Center for AIDS Research writes, "Vaccines save lives and the only way to get through this pandemic was always immunity; it is much safer to provide immunity to an older person through a vaccine than through natural infection."
Gandhi added that in the prospect of a future pandemic, models such as the one used and presented in the study could help mitigate the damage caused by widely restrictive policies, yet allow protection for those needing it the most.
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