Thousands of severe covid-19 cases in UK summer due to missed vaccines
Greater covid-19 vaccine uptake could have prevented around 7000 deaths and hospitalisations in the UK during summer 2022
By Clare Wilson
15 January 2024
Covid-19 vaccines being administered at Epsom racecourse in Surrey, UK
PA Images/Alamy
About 7000 people in the UK would not have died or been admitted to hospital due to covid-19 over the summer of 2022 if they had been fully vaccinated against the virus, a large study has found. This marks the first time the health consequences of covid-19 vaccine hesitancy have been calculated for an entire country.
Since the advent of the omicron variant, covid-19 vaccines are no longer very effective at stopping people from getting infected, but they still cut the risk of dying or needing to be admitted to hospital due to the virus.
Catherine Sudlow at the University of Edinburgh in the UK and her colleagues used health service data for the country to explore how much of an effect vaccination had on hospital cases and deaths in the summer of 2022, when most covid-19 restrictions had ended there.
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Sudlow’s team included data from 1 June to 30 September 2022, spanning a covid-19 wave that peaked in July. During this period, 40,000 people either died or needed to be admitted to hospital due to the virus, both of which were classed as a severe health outcome.
The team then compared rates of severe outcomes in people who had received the recommended number of covid-19 vaccines and boosters – for instance, four doses in people aged 75 and older by that point – with those who had received fewer than the recommended doses or none at all.
