As the Omicron variant of COVID-19 begins to spread and the Delta variant surge continues, a new study from Yale University and The Commonwealth Fund finds that the U.S. vaccination effort has profoundly curbed the pandemic’s toll.
The study, which updates estimates from July, finds that without the U.S. vaccination effort:
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There would have been approximately 1.1 million additional COVID-19 deaths and more than 10.3 million additional COVID-19 hospitalizations in the U.S. by November.
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Deaths from COVID would have been approximately 3.2 times higher and hospitalizations approximately 4.9 times higher than the actual toll during 2021.
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Daily deaths from COVID could have jumped to as high as 21,000 per day – nearly 5.2 times the level of the record peak of more than 4,000 deaths per day recorded in January 2021.
These findings, the report says, “point to the tremendous power of vaccination to reduce disease and death from COVID-19.”
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