ABSTRACT
Mass vaccination initiatives are underway worldwide, and a considerable percentage of the world's population is now vaccinated. This study examined the association of COVID-19 deaths per 1000 cases with a fully vaccinated population. The global median deaths per 1000 cases were 15.68 (IQR 9.84, 25.87) after 6 months of vaccinations and 11.96 (IQR 6.08, 20.63) after 12 months. Across 164 countries, we found significant variations in vaccination levels of populations, booster doses, and mortality, with higher vaccine coverage and lower mortality in high-income countries. Several regression models were performed to test the association between vaccination and COVID-19 mortality. Control variables were used to account for confounding variables. A 10-percentage-point increase in vaccination was associated with an 18.1% decrease in mortality after 6 months (95%CI, 7.4-28.8%) and a 16.8% decrease after 12 months (95%CI, 6.9-26.7%). A 10-percentage-point increase in booster vaccination rates was associated with a 33.1% decrease in COVID-19 mortality (95%CI, 16.0-50.2%). This relationship is present in most analyses by country income groups with variations in the effect size. Efforts are needed to reduce vaccine hesitancy while ensuring suitable infrastructure and supply to enable all countries to increase their vaccination rates.
ABSTRACT
We are living in times where a viral disease has brought normal life in much of the world to a halt. The novel coronavirus known as severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) causing coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) started in December 2019 in Wuhan, China initially and in a short time crossed the European borders. After mitigating the epidemic in China, Italy became one of the most COVID-19 affected countries worldwide. International travelers are important sources of infectious diseases and a possible source of epidemic. Due to its political, geographic, and cultural similarities, Italy is one of the main economic partners of Southeast European (SEE) countries. Our data show that infection in index cases in all 11 SEE countries was travel-related with Italy being a source country for 8/11 countries. After the first case identifications on February 25, the number of cases in SEE countries is continually rising reaching the total number of 15,612 with 565 fatal cases and overall case fatality ratio (CFR) of 3.6 (median 3.8, range 0.8-5.5) by April 10, 2020. At a time when the COVID-19 pandemic is approaching its peak, apart from the problems with treatment of the disease and care for critically ill patients, there are other equally important problems, such as organization of outbreak response, provision of health care, lack of hospital personnel, disruption of personal protective equipment supply chains and health care workers (HCWs) protection. But what is more important is the heroic behavior of the HCWs who are showing their humanity by disregarding their lives.