US COVID vaccination program may have saved 279,000 livesThe US COVID-19 vaccination program may have saved almost 280,000 lives and prevented 1.25 million hospitalizations, according to the results of a modeling study published yesterday by the Commonwealth Fund.The researchers already had a COVID-19 transmission model that took into account US demographics, age stratification and related COVID-19 risks, and pandemic mobility patterns, but to look at epidemiologic trajectories, they included variants of concern in addition to the original Wuhan, China–identified strain.
Simulations ran from Oct 1, 2020, to Jun 28, 2021, and were validated with hospitalization rates and death trends.The model showed that without the vaccination program,