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COVID vaccine hoarding might have cost more than a million lives

COVID vaccine hoarding might have cost more than a million lives

By the end of 2021, nearly half of the world’s population had received two doses of a COVID-19 vaccine. But those vaccines were not distributed equitably: vaccination rates were 75% in high-income countries, but less than 2% in some low-income countries.

Mathematical epidemiologists at the University of Warwick in Coventry, UK used data on mortality and vaccine availability to model what would have happened if vaccines had been distributed according to need rather than wealth.  The team found that more equitable vaccine coverage could have prevented 1.3 million deaths worldwide.

Click here to read more about the implications of this study.

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