At least 1.6 million lives have been saved in Europe by vaccination against COVID-19, according to new estimates published in “The Lancet Respiratory Medicine”. 60% of these people were immunized during the period when Omicron became the dominant strain of the virus.
The summer covid puts more and more Romanians in hospitals. Photo source: archive
The data comes from the World Health Organization’s European Respiratory Surveillance Network, which analyzed vaccination efforts from December 2020 to March 2023, a period that includes both the initial launch of vaccines in the European region and booster doses. A total of 34 out of 54 countries in the region were included in the study.
Across the 34 countries, overall vaccine coverage among all adults aged 25 years or older was 87% for the primary vaccine series, 82% for the second dose, 71% for the first booster, 24% for the second booster and 5% for the third booster until March 2023.
The study looked at deaths by age group (25 to 49 years, 50 to 59 years, 60 to 69 years, 70 to 79 years, and 80 years and older). Countries that reported weekly data for both COVID-19 vaccination and mortality by age group were included
The first booster dose saved most lives
In 29 countries, there were 1,064,165 deaths related to COVID-19 in people aged 25 years or older; of those deaths, 43 percent were in people age 80 or older, the study authors said.
By contrast, 40,788 (4%) and 19,831 (2%) of the deaths related to COVID-19 occurred in people aged 50 to 59 and 25 to 49, respectively.
In March 2023, 2.2 million deaths related to COVID-19 were reported in Europe.
