A new study by Indiana University and RAND Corp researchers says COVID-19 vaccinations prevented more than 139,000 U.S. deaths from the time they became available to early May.
Sumedha Gupta is an associate professor in the IUPUI School of Liberal Arts and lead author of the study. She said researchers were able to come up with this number by comparing states vaccination rates.
She added through state comparisons, they could observe the association between the vaccination rate, case rates, and deaths in a state.
Then, they could use these associations to understand how the vaccine influenced COVID-19 outcomes.
“We were able to sort of track what would have been the deaths from COVID-19, had vaccinations gone to zero. That means not existed at all,” Gupta said.
The study used data from Bloomberg and the New York Times, which Gupta said were some of the few reliable sources for statewide data when she and the other study authors started looking in mid-March.
The study estimates that the COVID-19 vaccines prevented 2,800 Hoosier deaths in the first five months of the vaccine becoming available.