With many more infections, though, there was a substantial increase in the share of deaths represented by vaccinated people from December 2021 to January 2022, as Omicron took hold. While currently available vaccines are substantially less effective in preventing infection with Omicron compared with earlier variants, they continue to offer significant protection against hospitalization and death, particularly for people receiving a booster dose. Over time, a growing share of COVID-19 deaths have occurred among people who were vaccinated, which is to be expected given that: a growing share of the adult population overall is vaccinated immunity induced by vaccines can wane over time, which is particularly an issue for older people as they are most at risk of mortality from COVID-19 and also more likely to have been vaccinated earlier compared to younger populations and the Omicron variant became the dominant variant in the US by the end of 2021 and has been able to evade vaccine protection against infections, especially among those without a booster dose. Timely booster doses may have prevented additional deaths among both unvaccinated and vaccinated people Had we done so, we would have found that even more unvaccinated deaths – as well as some vaccinated deaths – could have been prevented if they had not only been vaccinated, but also boosted. While it is clear that vaccine effectiveness increases with booster shots – CDC estimates a 94% effectiveness against in-hospital death or ventilator support with a booster (third shot) – we do not estimate the potential effect of booster protection here on deaths among unvaccinated people.
AVERAGE AGE OF COVID DEATHS IN US SERIES
Because CDC estimates of vaccine effectiveness against death for the primary series have varied over time, we apply a specific vaccine effectiveness estimate by time period, ranging from 91% for June through December 2021 to 79% in January through March 2022. As described in more detail in the Methods, we use CDC studies of vaccine effectiveness for the primary vaccine series against death to estimate the number of deaths among unvaccinated adults that most likely would not have been prevented by vaccination. We estimate a total of 270,000 adult COVID-19 deaths occurred among unvaccinated people from June 2021 through March 2022.Įven if all of the unvaccinated adults who died of COVID-19 had chosen to get vaccinated, some of those deaths would not have been prevented with vaccination, as vaccines are not 100% effective. Using CDC data on deaths by vaccination status for 25 jurisdictions, we calculated the share of COVID-19 deaths among those who were unvaccinated (ranging from 86% in June 2021, down to 58% in January 2022) and applied this to all adult COVID-19 deaths. To estimate the number of deaths that could have been prevented by vaccination, we remove COVID-19 deaths among vaccinated adults from the total number of adult COVID-19 deaths in each month. This yields a total of about 389,000 adult COVID-19 deaths since June 2021. We exclude children from this analysis because vaccines have not been accessible for all children and adult permission may be required, though children represent less than 1% of COVID-19 deaths. To estimate the number of COVID-19 deaths that could have been prevented by vaccination, we first looked at COVID-19 deaths among adults in the months after vaccines were widely available (June 2021 through March 2022).
About 234,000 COVID-19 deaths since June 2021 could have been prevented with vaccinations These vaccine-preventable deaths represent 60% of all adult COVID-19 deaths since June 2021, and a quarter (24%) of the nearly 1 million COVID-19 deaths since the pandemic began.
We find that approximately 234,000 deaths since June 2021 could have been prevented with primary series vaccination. In this analysis, we estimate the number of adult deaths that could have been prevented by timely vaccination. could have been fully vaccinated and protected from most cases of severe illness or death due to COVID-19. Therefore, by June 2021, adults in the U.S. had access to these vaccines months earlier. COVID-19 vaccines that are free, safe, and highly effective have been widely available to all adults in the U.S. For our analysis of COVID-19 as a leading cause of death, click here.Īs of mid-April 2022, nearly 1 million people in the U.S. Note : This brief was originally published on Octoand was updated most recently in April 2022.
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