Vaccine-preventable Deaths

Health
Written By Alysha Rashid

At least 225,000 American lives could have been saved (79,000 in Southern states) if every state had vaccinated 90% of adults.

Vaccine-preventable deaths per 1 million adults

April 18, 2021- April 30, 2022

Source: Brown University, School of Public Health. Notes: These are lower-bound (minimum) estimates of the number of deaths that would have been averted, for every 1 million adults, if each state had reached 90% vaccination coverage for adults.

The U.S. Covid death toll officially reached 1 million in May 2022. A new study shows that about one-quarter of those lives — at least 225,000 — could have been saved if each state had vaccinated 90% of adults.1 Relative to the size of their population, 5 Southern states were among the states that could have saved the most lives. With 90% vaccination coverage, WV would have saved at least 2,566 lives; TN at least 8,507; KY at least 5,373; AR at least 3,562; and AL at least 5,358. In terms of the sheer number of lives that could have been saved with 90% vaccination coverage, two states stick out from the rest. Texas and Florida could have saved at least 21,741 lives and 20,405 lives, respectively. The next closest state, with a much larger population, is California, which could have saved at least 13,944 lives.

The demand for Covid vaccines peaked 6 months after becoming available in early 2021, with slight increases during the Delta and Omicron surges. Though new Covid variants are likely to infect the vaccinated and unvaccinated at similar rates, vaccination remains the most effective form of protection against severe illness and death. Unvaccinated individuals are 3.4 times more likely to be hospitalized with Covid and 6 times more likely to die.2,3 Public health experts point to misinformation, mistrust, and lack of resources as causes for low vaccination rates. With a non-mRNA Covid vaccine poised to join the market, and vaccines available for young children, experts urge continued federal funding for community-led Covid vaccination campaigns.4,5,6

  1. “New Analysis Shows Vaccines Could Have Prevented 318,000 Deaths”. Brown School of Public Health and Microsoft AI for Health. May, 2022. https://globalepidemics.org/2022/05/13/new-analysis-shows-vaccines-could-have-prevented-318000-deaths/ 

  2. “Rates of laboratory-confirmed COVID-19 hospitalizations by vaccination status”. CDC. https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#covidnet-hospitalizations-vaccination 

  3. “Rates of COVID-19 Cases and Deaths by Vaccination Status”. CDC. https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#rates-by-vaccine-status 

  4. “FDA advisers greenlight Novavax COVID-19 vaccine”. Wadman. Science Insider. June, 2022. https://www.science.org/content/article/fda-advisers-greenlight-novavax-covid-19-vaccine 

  5. “About 300,000 children under 5 have received at least one Covid-19 shot, White House says”. Klein. CNN. July, 2022. https://www.cnn.com/2022/07/07/politics/covid-19-vaccine-children-under-5/index.html 

  6. “This is how many lives could have been saved with COVID vaccinations in each state”. Simmons-Duffin, Nakajima. NPR. May, 2022. https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2022/05/13/1098071284/this-is-how-many-lives-could-have-been-saved-with-covid-vaccinations-in-each-sta

Alysha Rashid
Previous

Long Covid
Next

Voting and health outcomes