The vax of life for city

8,300 fewer deaths

Coronavirus vaccinations have prevented 8,300 deaths and 44,000 hospitalizations in New York City during the first six months of 2021, according to preliminary figures from a Yale University study conducted with the city’s Health Department.

Overall, the data released Wednesday show that the jabs have prevented 250,000 coronavirus infections, and that just 1.1 percent of new cases came from fully vaccinated New Yorkers.

Between Jan. 1 and June 15, about 98 percent of hospitalizations (36,628 out of 37,211) and 98.8 percent of deaths (8,069 out of 8,163) due to COVID-19 complications were New Yorkers who were not fully vaccinated, the department said.

“The bottom line is: vaccination saves lives,” Dr. Alison Galvani, a Yale epidemiologist and the paper’s author, said during Mayor de Blasio’s daily press briefing.

“Our study underscores that the swift vaccine rollout has played a pivotal role in reducing the COVID-19 burden, and curbing surges from more transmissible emerging variants.

“The more New Yorkers that get vaccinated, the better for them and the rest of the city,” she added.

De Blasio added, “Those numbers tell a powerful, powerful story . . . This vaccination effort saved thousands and thousands of lives.

“This is a stunningly clear result,” he said.

City Health Commissioner Dr. Dave Chokshi said the numbers show the vaccines administered in the city have proven successful at warding off various strains of COVID-19.

On Tuesday, Chokshi warned that the highly contagious Delta variant was causing an increase in coronavirus cases among unvaccinated Staten Islanders.

“Now is a particularly dangerous time to be unvaccinated,” he said.

“But the safe and effective COVID-19 vaccines offer protection against it and all of the other circulating strains of the virus currently in New York.”