20 million lives saved by COVID-19 vaccines in first year: report - New York Post

The coronavirus pandemic could have been much worse without vaccines, according to a new study that claims the number of deaths recorded worldwide from the coronavirus would be more than triple than it is today.

In the year after the vaccine was first introduced in December 2020, more than 4.3 billion people received an inoculation, saving 20 million lives, according to research published Thursday in the journal Lancet Infectious Diseases.

One million people in Brazil were also spared death from the virus thanks to the vaccines, as were more than a half million people in both France and the United Kingdom, researchers said.

The study found that 14.4 million deaths were averted when only accounting for reported COVID-19 deaths, but the number of lives spared grew considerably when scientists accounted for deaths likely tied to the virus.