The early Covid-19 vaccination campaign in the US prevented nearly 1,40,000 deaths and three million corona cases by the second week of May, according to a new study.
The study, published online by the journal Health Affairs, estimates the number of lives saved between December 21, 2020, to May 9, 2021, in each of the 50 states and Washington, DC. As a result of early vaccination efforts, the average state experienced five fewer deaths from Covid-19 per 10,000 adult residents.
Adjusting for population size, New York saw the largest estimated reduction, with 11.7 fewer Covid-19 deaths per 10,000 adult residents. Hawaii observed the smallest reduction, with 1.1 fewer Covid-19 deaths per 10,000 adult residents.
“The findings provide support for policies that further expand vaccine administration to enable a larger proportion of the nation’s population to benefit,” said Christopher Whaley, a policy researcher at RAND, a nonprofit research organisation.
“Our results suggest that further efforts to vaccinate populations globally and in a coordinated fashion will be critical to achieving greater control of the Covid-19 pandemic,” added Sumedha Gupta, first author of the study and an economist at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis.
The economic value of the lives saved during the study period is estimated to be between $625 billion and $1.4 trillion. By the end of 2020, the US federal government had allocated $13 billion dollars for vaccine development and manufacturing, the researchers said.
The US continues to be the worst-hit country with the world’s highest number of cases and deaths at 3,71,48,877 and 6,24,209, respectively, according to Johns Hopkins University.
More than 59 per cent of the US population has received at least one dose of Covid-19 vaccines, with 50.9 per cent fully vaccinated, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.