Australia's COVID-19 vaccination program saved the lives of almost 20,000 people in NSW alone between August 2021 and July 2022, according to new research released today.
According to the computer simulations done by Victoria's RMIT and Monash universities, vaccines prevented 17,760 deaths in NSW's over-50 population during those 12 months.
That period included the peak of the Delta outbreak, the lifting of the state's longest lockdown, and the emergence of the Omicron subvariant.
The study said that, without vaccines, 21,250 people aged over 50 would have died from the virus in the state over those 12 months — almost six times the actual 3495 deaths in that age group.
"The rapid development of safe and effective vaccines for COVID-19 is perhaps one of the greatest achievements of medical science," Paul Griffin, director of infectious diseases at Mater Health Services, who wasn't involved in the study, said.
"Given the COVID-19 vaccines, like most vaccines in fact, are not 'perfect' in that they do have some limitations including not completely preventing infection in all recipients, and not unexpectedly they have been responsible for some adverse events, many have been critical of them.
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"Further, a challenge with a successful public health intervention on this scale is given the lack of an obvious control group, sometimes it's difficult to fully appreciate the magnitude of benefit provided."
The study found unvaccinated people aged 50 or older had an almost eight-fold greater chance of dying from the virus than those who received two doses, while people who received three were 11.2 times less likely to die.
Professor Tony Blakely, an epidemiologist at the University of Melbourne, said the paper highlights the good fortune Australia had with its vaccination campaign after initial delays.
"By good luck we had a rapid rush of vaccination just before Omicron arrived which made for high protection against Omicron before vaccine protection waned," he said.
"Australia was further lucky that when we opened up, Omicron was the circulating virus that was less lethal than, say, Delta.
"But this paper makes the important point that even Omicron, in an unvaccinated population, would have had a massive death toll.
"The estimated deaths averted in this paper are probably underestimates, as higher vaccination rates would have had positive spillover effects of reducing transmission."
That last point was shared by the research authors, who acknowledged the figure of 17,760 was a "conservative first approximation".
