Did the vaccination against Corona save lives or was it disproportionately risky given the side effects that occurred in some cases? Researchers from the UN World Health Organization (WHO) have now presented an estimate based on data. According to this, around 1.6 million lives were saved in Europe by the vaccinations between December 2020 and March 2023. Compared to the 2.2 million deaths the virus has claimed on the old continent, this would be a great success for the vaccination.
Margaux Meslé and colleagues from the WHO office in Copenhagen took the data on infections and deaths from the European Serveillance System, broken down into the age groups 25 to 49 years, 50 to 59 years, 60 to 69 years, 70 to 79 years and 80 years and older. They also took data on the observed effectiveness of the vaccination from published studies. They combined both with information on the virus variants circulating in each case. (The wild-type virus circulated until January 2, 2021, the alpha variant between June 3, 2021 and January 6, 2021, the delta variant between July 11 and December 5, 2021. From December 13, 2021 until the end of the study period, variants of the omicron lineage were dominant).
They break down their results in the journal “The Lancet Respiratory Medicine”. They estimate that in countries with high vaccination coverage, the reduction in deaths due to vaccinations was 59 percent. This would correspond to around 1.6 million lives saved. Those who benefited most from this were those over 60, who made up 96 percent of the people saved. Of these, the group of those over 80 had the highest proportion, with a total of 52 percent. The third vaccination dose turned out to be particularly effective. It alone reduced mortality by 51 percent, according to the study authors.
