Report: Vaccines Saved Hundreds Of Thousands Of U.S. Lives

A new study from Yale University and the Commonwealth Fund has found that Covid-19 vaccines have saved hundreds of thousands of lives and prevented more than a million hospitalizations in the United States. It compared current trends in cases, hospitalizations and deaths to a modeled trajectory of what would have occurred if the U.S. had not vaccinated its population at all. Under that scenario, the U.S. would have experienced an additional 279,000 deaths, 46 percent more than the actual number of deaths, according to CNN. In addition, there would have been a further 1.25 million hospitalizations.

The study also gauged what would have occurred if the vaccination campaign had been carried out at half its pace. That would have seen 121,000 people dying and a further 450,000 hospitalized. A range of factors were taken into consideration for the model such as the transmissibility of new coronavirus variants, vaccine efficacy, increased risk by age as well as daily contacts. The vast majority of deaths in these two scenarios would have occurred as a result of the Alpha variant of Covid-19 which was first identified in the United Kingdom.

Without vaccination, that variant would have surged during the spring, resulting in nearly 4,500 daily deaths, considerably higher than the peak of 3,400 deaths per day seen in January. White House Covid-19 response director Jeff Zients responded to the study's findings last Thursday, calling it "a powerful reminder about what's at stake in our vaccination efforts". Last week, White House officials said that virtually all Covid-19 hospitalizations and deaths are occurring among unvaccinated people and that cases are set to continue rising among those who have not gotten the jab due to the prevalence of the more infectious Delta variant.