COVID-19 deaths and hospitalizations averted by rapid vaccination rollout in the United States

  1. Seyed M. Moghadas
  2. Pratha Sah
  3. Meagan C. Fitzpatrick
  4. Affan Shoukat
  5. Abhishek Pandey
  6. Thomas N. Vilches
  7. Burton H. Singer
  8. Eric C. Schneider
  9. Alison P. Galvani

Reviewed by

Read the full article See related articles

Listed in

Log in to save this article

Abstract

Importance

Randomized clinical trials have shown that the COVID-19 vaccines currently approved in the US are highly efficacious. However, more evidence is needed to understand the population-level impact of the US vaccination rollout in the face of the changing landscape of COVID-19 pandemic in the US, including variants with higher transmissibility and immune escape.

Objective

To quantify the population-level impact of the US vaccination campaign in averting cases, hospitalizations and deaths from December 12, 2020 to June 28, 2021.

Design

Age-stratified agent-based model which included transmission dynamics of the Alpha, Gamma and Delta variants in addition to the original Wuhan-1 variant.

Setting

Our model was calibrated to COVID-19 outbreak and vaccine rollout in the US. Model predictions were made at the country level.

Participants

Simulated age-stratified population representing US demographics.

Main Outcomes and Measures

Cases, hospitalizations and deaths averted by vaccination against COVID-19 in the US, compared to the counterfactuals of no vaccination and vaccination administered at half the actual pace.

Results

The swift vaccine rollout in the US curbed a potential resurgence of cases in April 2021, which would have been otherwise fuelled by the Alpha variant. Compared to the scenario without vaccines, we estimated that the actual vaccination program averted more than 26 million cases, 1.2 million hospitalizations and saved 279,000 lives. A vaccination campaign with half the actual rollout rate would have led to an additional 460,000 hospitalizations and 121,000 deaths.

Conclusions and Relevance

The COVID-19 vaccination campaign in the US has had an extraordinary impact on reducing disease burden despite the emergence of highly transmissible variants. These findings highlight that the pace of vaccination was essential for mitigating COVID-19 in the US, and underscore the urgent need to close the vaccine coverage gaps in communities across the country.

Key Points

Question

How effective was the United States (US) vaccination campaign in suppressing COVID-19 burden?

Findings

The vaccination campaign was highly effective in curbing the COVID-19 outbreak in the US. We estimated that the vaccine rollout saved over 275,000 lives and averted 1.2 million hospitalizations.

Meaning

The swift vaccine rollout in the US averted a remarkable number of cases, hospitalizations and deaths despite the emergence of highly transmissible variants.

Article activity feed

  1. ScreenIT

    SciScore for 10.1101/2021.07.07.21260156: (What is this?)

    Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.

    Table 1: Rigor

    Ethicsnot detected.
    Sex as a biological variablenot detected.
    Randomizationnot detected.
    Blindingnot detected.
    Power Analysisnot detected.

    Table 2: Resources

    No key resources detected.

    Results from OddPub: Thank you for sharing your code.

    Results from LimitationRecognizer: An explicit section about the limitations of the techniques employed in this study was not found. We encourage authors to address study limitations.

    Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.

    Results from Barzooka: We did not find any issues relating to the usage of bar graphs.

    Results from JetFighter: We did not find any issues relating to colormaps.

    Results from rtransparent:
    • Thank you for including a conflict of interest statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • Thank you for including a funding statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • No protocol registration statement was detected.

    Results from scite Reference Check: We found no unreliable references.

    About SciScore

    SciScore is an automated tool that is designed to assist expert reviewers by finding and presenting formulaic information scattered throughout a paper in a standard, easy to digest format. SciScore checks for the presence and correctness of RRIDs (research resource identifiers), and for rigor criteria such as sex and investigator blinding. For details on the theoretical underpinning of rigor criteria and the tools shown here, including references cited, please follow this link.

  2. Version published to 10.1101/2021.07.07.21260156v1 on medRxiv