Americans have been receiving COVID-19 vaccines since the beginning of this year, with the expectation that doing so will slow virus transmission and save lives. But until now, it was unknown how vaccine administration has affected coronavirus-related deaths.
The journal Health Affairs released a preprint of a study this week whose authors say it is the first assessment of the effects of state-level vaccination campaigns to address the pandemic. They arrived at their findings using publicly available data for both state vaccine administration and COVID-19 deaths.
The researchers looked at the association between the early vaccination campaign in the U.S. and COVID-19 deaths in the first five months of vaccine availability.
By May 9, they write, the U.S. vaccination campaign was associated with a reduction of 139,393 deaths from the virus.
The association the researchers found between vaccinations and averted deaths varied by state. For example, 11.7 fewer COVID-19 deaths per 10,000 occurred in New York during this period, while in Hawaii, the number was 1.1 fewer deaths per 10,000.
