Pretty much everyone around the world has been affected by COVID-19 in one aspect or another. Almost two years ago, the first person outside of clinical testing received the COVID vaccine in the United States. A recent study released by the Commonwealth Fund, shows COVID-19 vaccines have been able to prevent over three million deaths.
Since the beginning of the pandemic, there have been over one million people have died due to the coronavirus, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The new study suggests the U.S. would have seen a devastating larger toll if not for the vaccines.
The whole country would have seen roughly four times as many deaths, 3.8 times more hospitalizations, and 1.5 times more infections since the pandemic started in December 2020. COVID-19 vaccines also saved the United States $1 trillion in additional medical costs.
Commonwealth Fund COVID-19 Study
The key message from the study is that COVID vaccines are “worth our money as taxpayers,” said Isaac Chun-Hai Fung, an associate professor of epidemiology at Georgia Southern University, who was not involved in the study. Adding, “We pay for the vaccination campaign and it works. It saves us money and it saves lives.”
The U.S. has administered over 655 million doses of the COVID-19 vaccine. This number includes 80% of the population who received at least one dose. Cumulatively this has prevented more than 18 million additional hospitalizations and more than 3 million additional deaths, according to the Commonwealth Fund’s study.
The swift development of the vaccine in combination with the emergency authorization, and rapid rollout to widely distribute them, has “been instrumental in curbing hospitalization and death.” It also mitigated the “socioeconomic repercussions of the pandemic.”
When the new COVID variants arose, the original vaccines and boosters proved to not be enough. However, the new bivalent boosters have been proven effective against the new variants as well as the original strain. Without the original dose of the COVID-19 vaccines, the wave of infections would have been more devastating.
What Could Have Happened Without Vaccines?
Many more people would have lost their lives due to COVID-19 if vaccines didn’t exist. The Commonwealth Fund believes there could have been roughly 120 million more individuals infected with the virus. Not only did the vaccines save countless lives but they also saved the country a massive amount of money.
During the 2 years #Covid vaccines have been available in the US, they have kept more than 18.5M people out of the hospital and saved more than 3.2M lives, according to a new study from the Commonwealth Fund https://t.co/h43vQycwyL
— delthia ricks 🔬 (@DelthiaRicks) December 13, 2022
By Sheena Robertson
Sources:
The Commonwealth Fund: Two Years of U.S. COVID-19 Vaccines Have Prevented Millions of Hospitalizations and Deaths
Stat News: Covid vaccines averted 3 million deaths in U.S., according to new study
Top and Featured Image Courtesy of USAID U.S. Agency for International Development‘s Flickr Page – Creative Commons License
