How many California lives were saved by COVID-19 vaccines? Scientists have an answer
LA TimesThe arrival of the first COVID-19 vaccines in December 2020 marked the start of a new, safer phase of the pandemic. In the first 10 months of their availability, COVID-19 vaccines prevented an estimated 1.5 million coronavirus infections, nearly 73,000 hospitalizations, and almost 20,000 deaths in California, according to a study published Friday in the journal JAMA Network Open. Each of those thwarted cases represent an opportunity to “allow people to actually go to work, to be with their family safely, to not have such socioeconomic disruption.” From Jan. 1, 2020 — when few Californians could have heard of the novel coronavirus, much less been exposed to it — to Oct. 16, 2021, the state recorded 4.6 million coronavirus infections. Last year, the Commonwealth Fund, a foundation focused on healthcare for underserved communities, determined that the U.S. vaccination campaign saved a total of 1.1 million American lives and prevented 10.3 million hospitalizations nationwide through Nov. 30, 2021, a period about six weeks longer than the California study covered. In an updated model posted earlier this month, analysts estimated that vaccines have prevented 66 million U.S. infections, 17 million hospitalizations and 2.2 million deaths and saved $900 billion in healthcare costs since the administration of the first shot to a nurse in New York.