Vaccinating older people probably did avert some deaths in 2021, but the effects were small. And even those small effects on mortality seem to have dissipated during the booster programme. That’s the conclusion of our new study, published in the European Economic Review.
COVID-related deaths decreased significantly in most of Europe and the US from the middle of 2021. Although this reduction coincided with the rollout of COVID vaccines, it has proved surprisingly difficult to identify the extent to which vaccination contributed to the drop in deaths.
Randomised controlled trials (the gold standard for testing new treatments) suggest COVID vaccination can provide significant protection against serious illness and death relative to unvaccinated people who have not previously been infected with COVID. But there are reasons the effect of vaccination on mortality may be lower when viewed outside of trials.
