Covid vaccines cut global death toll by 20m in first year, study finds

The first major analysis shows that covid vaccines saved 20 million lives in the first year.

Without Covid vaccines, 31.4 million people would have died and 19.8 million of them would have died. The goal of the study is to quantify the number of deaths prevented by Covid-19 vaccinations.

The study carried out by scientists at the university predicted that there would be 20 million deaths in the first year.

If access to vaccines had been equal, more deaths could have been avoided. One in five Covid deaths in low-income countries could have been prevented if the World Health Organization had met its goal of 40% vaccine coverage.

According to the findings, millions of lives have been saved by making vaccines available to everyone. More could have been done to improve the situation.

The immunity opportunity to save lives has narrowed because of the high levels of previous infections in parts of the world with low vaccine coverage

Almost two-thirds of the world's population have received at least one dose of a vaccine since the first Covid vaccine was administered outside a clinical trial setting.

Official figures were used for deaths from Covid and excess deaths from each country in the study. In many countries, the most reliable picture of Covid deaths is the excess mortality figure, which is the difference between the total number of people who died from all causes and the number of deaths expected.

The analyses were compared with a scenario in which no vaccine was given. The figures capture the effect on mortality rates of more hospital beds being available and the direct protection of vaccines for individuals.

The figures probably represent the upper end of how many deaths were avoided if there was no vaccine availability.

Prof Azra Ghani is a chair in infectious disease epidemiology at Imperial College London. It is important that the most vulnerable people in all parts of the world are protected from the ongoing circulation of Covid-19 and other diseases that disproportionately affect the poor.