{"doi":"10.1101/2024.11.03.24316673","title":"Global estimates of lives and life-years saved by COVID-19 vaccination during 2020-2024","abstract":"<h4>ABSTRACT</h4> <h4>Importance</h4> Estimating global lives and life-years saved is important to put into perspective the benefits of COVID-19 vaccination. Prior studies have focused mainly on the pre-Omicron period or only on specific regions, lack crucial life-year calculations, and often depend on strong modeling assumptions with unaccounted uncertainty. <h4>Observations</h4> We aimed to calculate the lives and life-years saved by COVID-19 vaccination worldwide from the onset of the vaccination campaigns and until October 2024. We considered different strata according to age; community-dwelling and long-term care residence status; pre-Omicron and Omicron periods; and vaccination before and after a SARS-CoV-2 infection. In the main analysis, 2.533 million deaths were averted (1 death averted per 5,400 vaccine doses administered). Eighty-two percent were among people vaccinated before any infection, 57% were in the Omicron period, and 90% pertained to people 60 years and above. Sensitivity analyses suggested 1.4 to 4.0 million lives saved. Some sensitivity analyses showed preponderance of the benefit during the pre-Omicron period. We estimated 14.8 million life-years saved (1 life-year saved per 900 vaccine doses administered). Sensitivity range was 7.4-23.6 million life-years. Most life-years saved (76%) were in people over 60 years old, but long-term care residents contributed only 2% of the total. Children and adolescents (0.01% of lives saved and 0.1% of life-years saved) and young adults 20-29 years old (0.07% of lives saved and 0.3% of life-years saved) had very small contributions to the total benefit. <h4>Conclusions and relevance</h4> Based on a number of assumptions, these estimates are substantially more conservative than previous calculations focusing mostly on the first year of vaccination, but they still clearly demonstrate a major overall benefit from COVID-19 vaccination during 2020-2024. The vast majority of benefit in lives and life-years saved was secured for a portion of the elderly minority of the global population.","journal":"medRxiv","year":2024,"id":1014,"datarank":0.33188153391885217,"base_score":1.9459101490553132,"endowment":1.9459101490553132,"self_citation_contribution":0.29188652235829704,"citation_network_contribution":0.03999501156055515,"self_endowment_contribution":0.29188652235829704,"citer_contribution":0.03999501156055515,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":6,"citer_count":6,"citers_with_citation_signal":3,"citers_with_endowment":3,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.1146,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2024-11-04","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":4553,"name":"Angelo Maria Pezzullo","orcid":"0000-0002-8252-4654","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":13027,"name":"Antonio Cristiano","orcid":"0000-0001-7055-8577","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":3357,"name":"Stefania Boccia","orcid":"0000-0002-1864-749X","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":148,"name":"John P. A. Ioannidis","orcid":"0000-0003-3118-6859","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":90,"raw_metadata":{"citation_network_status":"fetched"},"created_at":"2026-03-01T18:20:47.508186Z","pmid":null,"pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}