Vaccines saved millions – study

Nearly 20 million lives were saved by Covid-19 vaccines during their first year, but even more deaths could have been prevented if international targets for the shots had been reached, researchers have reported.

On December 8, 2020, a retired shop clerk in England received the first shot in what would become a global vaccination campaign.

During the next 12 months, more than 4.3 billion people around the world lined up for the vaccines.

The effort, though marred by persisting inequities, prevented deaths on an unimaginable scale, said Oliver Watson of Imperial College London, who led the new modelling study.

‘‘Catastrophic would be the first word that comes to mind,’’ Watson said of the outcome if vaccines hadn’t been available to fight the coronavirus.

The findings ‘‘quantify just how much worse the pandemic could have been if we did not have these vaccines’’, he said.

The researchers used data from 185 countries to estimate that vaccines prevented 4.2 million deaths in India, 1.9 million in the United States, 1 million in Brazil, 631,000 in France, and 507,000 in the United Kingdom.

An additional 600,000 deaths would have been prevented if the World Health Organisation target of 40% vaccination coverage by the end of 2021 had been met, according to the study, published yesterday in the journal Lancet Infectious Diseases.

The main finding – that 19.8 million Covid-19 deaths were prevented – is based on estimates of how many more deaths than usual occurred during the time period.

Using only reported Covid deaths, the same model yielded a figure of 14.4 million deaths averted by vaccines.

The London scientists excluded China because of uncertainty around the pandemic’s effect on deaths there, and its huge population. It also did not include how the virus might have mutated differently in the absence of vaccines, and did not factor in how lockdowns or mask wearing might have changed if vaccines were not available.

Another modelling group used a different approach to estimate that 16.3 million deaths were averted by vaccines. That work, by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation in Seattle, has not been published.

GETTY IMAGES Jade Harris, 4, reacts with relief as he and sister Hazel, 4, get their Covid-19 vaccinations at Children’s Hospital New Orleans, after the United States this week approved vaccinations for children aged under 5. In a new modelling study, scientists estimate that nearly 20 million lives were saved worldwide by Covid-19 vaccines during their first year.