10,000 Illinois Lives Could Have Been Saved With COVID Vaccines: Study

ILLINOIS — More than 10,000 COVID-19 deaths in Illinois — and about 319,000 nationally — could have been prevented in the days and months after vaccines became widely available early in 2021, according to a new analysis by health researchers.

The study found that a total of 10,173 of 19,681 deaths (or 1,021.8 deaths per 1 million) people who died because of COVID-19 or related illnesses, were avoidable in Illinois with vaccine protection, according to the analysis published at Brown School of Public Health’s Global Epidemics website.

A dashboard showing a state-by-state breakdown of preventable COVID-19 deaths from January 2021 through last month was released earlier this month as a descendant of the omicron variant becomes the dominant strain of the virus.

Also contributing to the analysis were researchers from Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, and Microsoft AI for Health.

They say their analysis shows that since vaccines became widely available, every second COVID-19 death could have been prevented.

COVID-19 has killed more than 1 million people in the United States since the first deaths were reported in 2020. Daily reports of new COVID-19 infections have increased threefold since April, according to a database maintained by The New York Times, increasing in almost every U.S. state but especially in the Northeast and Midwest.

In those regions, The Times reported, case reports now are higher than they were in advance of last summer’s delta variant surge. However, with the availability of at-home tests whose results don’t show up in official counts, the number of people with COVID-19 infections may go undercounted.

On average, more than 300 people a day are dying, fewer than the average of 2,600 people who died daily at the height of the omicron surge, according to The Times.

Most of the northern part of Illinois, including Chicago, Cook County, and much of the surrounding counties in the greater Chicago area remain in the “high” COVID-19 community category. In all, a total of 15 Illinois counties are currently in the high community rate, according to standards set by the Centers For Disease Control and Prevention.

Over the past week, the Illinois Department of Public Health reported 36,843 new cases over the past week and said that there have been 45 COVID-19-related deaths, according to data released on Wednesday.

State health officials reported that 1,136 people across Illinois are hospitalized with COVID-19 and that 35 are on ventilators.

“With 45 counties in Illinois now rated at a Medium or High Community Level, we should all be sure that we are up-to-date with vaccinations and booster shots,” IDPH Acting Director Amaal Tokars said in a news release on Wednesday. “We should all strongly consider masking up if we are entering indoor public places and avoiding indoor crowded spaces whenever possible at this time – especially if you are at risk of a severe outcome. If you test positive, promptly contact a healthcare provider to discuss which treatment is right for you. The treatments are much more effective at preventing hospitalizations and deaths when they are taken early in the course of the illness.”

In Illinois, about 69 percent of eligible residents are fully vaccinated, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention tracker. Officials said that in Illinois, 71 percent of residents had received at least one dose of the vaccines.

Everyone 12 and older is eligible for a booster shot, and federal health officials recommend that people 50 and older get a second booster shot. A CDC advisory panel was scheduled to meet Thursday to decide whether to recommend boosters for children ages 5-11, an age group where vaccine hesitancy is high.

Stefanie Friedhoff, a professor at Brown and one of the authors of the analysis, told National Public Radio the COVID-19 vaccine rollout was both “a remarkable success and a remarkable failure.”

The United States was the first to make vaccines available, Friedhoff said, but “did not start early on with the information campaigns about why vaccines are important.”

“We underestimated dramatically the investment it would take to get people familiarized with vaccines because, by and large, we haven't had a deadly disease like this, so people have become estranged from the important impact of vaccination,” she told NPR.

Once the vaccines were available, more lives could have been saved in the months since vaccines became available. States, where the most lives could have been saved, tended to have high rates of vaccine hesitancy. They are ranked by the deaths per 1 million people that could have been prevented with vaccines:

• West Virginia: 3,350 of 5,483 deaths, or 2,337.6 deaths per 1 million people.

• Wyoming: 938 of 1,374 deaths, or 2,109.4 deaths per 1 million people.

• Tennessee: 11,047 of 18,98 deaths, or 2,076.7 per 1 million people.

• Kentucky: 7,154 of 12,419 deaths, or 2,065.0 per 1 million people.

• Oklahoma: 5,833 of 11,744 deaths, or 1,939.9 per 1 million people.

Places with high vaccine compliance had the fewest preventable deaths. They include:

• Washington, D.C.: 164 of 548 deaths, or 284.6 per 1 million people.

• Massachusetts: 1,957 of 7,761 deaths, or 353.4 per 1 million people.

• Puerto Rico: 1,232 of 2,681 deaths, or 470.5 per 1 million people.

• Vermont: 287 of 498 deaths, or 562.3 per 1 million people.

• Hawaii: 734 of 1,128 deaths, or 657.9 per 1 million people.

» For more on the mapping project, go to National Public Radio, read the story and listen to the four-minute interview with Stefanie Friedhoff.