According to a new report, the COVID-19 pandemic, while terrible, could have been so much worse without the existence of vaccines!
In other words, this research confirms, once again, that the shots available were able to save many lives from all over the world.
In fact, it appears that without inoculation, the recorded deaths from COVID could have been three times as many!
The research published earlier this week in the journal Lancet Infectious Diseases shows that the shot, which was received by over 4.3 billion people, saved no less than 20 million lives!
Not only that but, it also suggests that an additional 600,000 lives would have been spared if only the World Health Organization’s goal of 40 percent vaccination coverage would’ve been met before the end of last year.
Oliver Watson, the lead Imperial College London researcher explains that the findings “quantify how much worse the pandemic could’ve been if we didn’t have these vaccines. Catastrophic would be the first word to come to mind.”
As you may or may not know, over 6.3 million people have unfortunately lost their lives because of the virus.
More than 1 million of them were US citizens as per Our World Data.
As part of this new study, researchers looked into data from all over the world and learned that the available COVID-19 vaccines were able to prevent no less than 19.8 million total deaths, 1.9 million of them only in the United States and 4.2 million in India!
Furthermore, in Brazil, a million people were spared thanks to the vaccine while over half a million were also saved in France and the UK.
It’s important to mention that this study has some limitations as well, mostly due to the fact that 10 countries were excluded from the data gathering, including China!
After all, China is the most populated country in the world so knowing the numbers there would have made a huge difference.
However, the researchers stressed that there was not enough available information about the vaccine’s effect on Chinese citizens.
Furthermore, other COVID prevention methods such as wearing masks or lockdowns were not taken into consideration either when putting together the data.
Regardless, it is still safe to say that despite the limitations of this study, it is more than enough to prove the efficiency of the vaccine in saving many lives.
