The vaccination campaign against Covid in Italy has made it possible to avoid about 8 million infections, over 500,000 hospitalizations, over 55,000 hospitalizations in intensive care and about 150,000 deaths.
The estimate refers to the period between 27 December 2020 and 31 January 2022, is reported in a report published today by the Higher Institute of Health.
The calculation was made with a method that uses data from the Integrated Surveillance and the national vaccine register of the Ministry of Health. This approach is based on the idea that the weekly impact of vaccination on the events studied (notified Covid cases, hospitalizations, ICU admissions and deaths) can be estimated by combining vaccination efficacy against the event of interest, vaccination coverage. weekly and the weekly number of observed events.
A direct estimate because it does not consider the possible indirect impact of vaccination on the unvaccinated population (for example, the infections avoided among the vaccinated could have contained the overall transmissibility observed in Italy).
In January 2022 alone, characterized by the predominance of the highly contagious Omicron variant, vaccination made it possible to avoid a total of 5.2 million cases of infection, 228 thousand hospitalizations, 19 thousand hospitalizations in intensive care and 74 thousand deaths.
(Unioneonline / L)