90,000 US COVID-19 deaths could have been prevented by vaccines in 4 months, 2 leading US nonprofits estimate
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- About 90,000 COVID-19 deaths in the US between June and September were preventable, two US nonprofits say.
- In September, 49,000 deaths could have been avoided if more adults got a COVID-19 shot, they said.
- The Kaiser Family Foundation and the Peterson Center on Healthcare cited a tracker that uses CDC data.
About 90,000 COVID-19 deaths in the US between the start of June and the end of September were probably preventable by vaccines, an analysis from two influential US nonprofits has found.
In September alone, approximately 49,000 deaths could have been avoided if more American adults had chosen to get a COVID-19 shot, researchers from the Kaiser Family Foundation and the Peterson Center on Healthcare said in a report published Tuesday.
The researchers came to the figures by analyzing data from the Peterson-Kaiser health system tracker, which uses Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) data.
Dr. Krutika Amin, an associate director at KFF and study author, told the Daily Mail that health officials should use the figures to let unvaccinated people know the risk they may be taking.
As it stands, 21.5% of US adults remain unvaccinated, according to the CDC.
Amin said there were "still ways" to reach unvaccinated people by continuing to tell them how effective vaccines are. The "overwhelming majority" of deaths, severe illnesses, and hospitalizations from COVID-19 among unvaccinated people, she said, per the Daily Mail.
Real-world data from the US, UK, and France has shown that COVID-19 vaccines are at least 90% effective against severe COVID-19.
To get the 49,000 figure, researchers first calculated the number of people that had died from COVID-19 between the start of June and the end of September. All US adults have been eligible for a vaccine since early May, so by June, US adults could have been fully vaccinated and protected from most cases of severe illness or death due to COVID-19, they said.
The study authors then discounted deaths among vaccinated people, as well as young people that had died from COVID-19 without being eligible for a shot.
They then assumed that 91% of the remaining unvaccinated deaths would have been prevented by COVID-19 shots, citing a CDC study from September.
Amin cautioned that the findings couldn't be used to predict future trends because factors related to COVID-19 changed over time such as variants, the number of vaccinated people, and the degree of lockdown.
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