Researchers are now looking back over the last several months of the pandemic and using it as a roadmap for what can be done differently in the future.
In particular, studying how many deaths have been prevented by widespread vaccination efforts can help inform future public health policy, said Dr. Ana Bento, Assistant Professor of Epidemiology & Biostatistics at the Indiana University Bloomington School of Public Health on Tuesday’s "Ask an Expert" with KCBS Radio’s Holly Quan and Dan Mitchinson.
According to an August study that assessed the first five months of COVID-19 vaccine availability in the United States, up to 140,000 lives were saved by the dissemination of the vaccine.
"The idea really is to understand the effect of one person getting the vaccine on the actual community that’s around them," said Bento, one of the study’s authors.
"By vaccinating more and more people, we’re not just averting cases, but averting deaths in the community," she said.
The rollout of the vaccine in this pandemic, "went as well as it could have been," said Bento. Particularly as the vaccine was developed in record time to curb a current outbreak, she said.
More concerning is the uptick in transmission rates. Since there are still pockets of the population spread out around the country that are hesitant to get vaccinated, it makes it harder to evaluate the vaccination needs of certain communities.
The team used "evidence-based estimates" to make the conclusion in their study. Using the now well-known rate of infection caused by the virus and subsequent variants, the researchers were able to calculate how many people would have been infected if no one had received the vaccine at all, said Bento.
The August study focuses on the first five months of vaccine availability, where the majority of recipients were aged 65 and older or immunocompromised. Researchers are now looking into the following months, when the vaccine was opened up to everyone.
Particularly children over the age of five, said Bento, "which of course are a very interesting part of the population because they have now gone back to school in most communities," she said. Not only will the vaccine affect the children themselves, but also the surrounding community living by the schools.
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