A Cross-Country Analysis of the Effectiveness of COVID-19 Vaccines in Reducing Mortality Rates within the EU

  1. Svetoslav Bliznashki

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Abstract

We use a linear mixed model in order to estimate the effect of the number of people vaccinated against COVID-19 on the overall death toll on a monthly basis. We limit our analysis for the duration of the year 2021 and within 25 countries which are current or former (UK) members of the EU since these countries follow similar approaches to testing and reporting different COVID-19 related statistics. We explored the effect in question by comparing the total number of people vaccinated up to the end of each month and the total number of deaths occurring during the next month while controlling for several measures including number of new COVID-19 cases, diabetes prevalence, cardio vascular death rates and time trends among others. Our results indicated that one percentage point monthly increase in the total number of vaccinated people was associated, on average, with a decrease of two deaths per general population of 1 million for the next month with the effect being highly significant. An Individual Growth Curves Analysis further corroborates these findings and suggests that vaccination rates may possibly exert additional indirect effects unaccounted for by our main model.

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    SciScore for 10.1101/2022.01.23.22269604: (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: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).

    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

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  2. Version published to 10.1101/2022.01.23.22269604v1 on medRxiv