An international team of health and medical researchers including workers at the WHO, working with economists and modeling specialists, has found that the use of vaccines to prevent or treat disease has saved the lives of approximately 154 million people over the past half-century.
In their study, published in The Lancet, the group used mathematical and statistical modeling to develop estimates for lives saved due to vaccines and then added them together to find the total.
Evidence from past outbreaks indicates that this strain, called clade I, is more lethal than the separate strain that sparked the 2022 outbreak. Clade I has for decades caused small outbreaks, often limited to a few households or communities, in Central Africa. Sexually acquired clade I infections had not been reported before last year.
Amidst the anticipated increase in vaccine-preventable diseases as the global population ages, a first-of-its-kind study has underscored the dual benefits of adult immunization programs.
Antibody levels fell to low or near zero within the first few months of getting the vaccine, unless the person had previously received a smallpox vaccine, scientists reported Saturday at the European Congress of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases in Barcelona.
Transmission rates are still far below levels from 2022, when there were tens of thousands of cases in the US. But after a quieter year last year, experts say the US is vulnerable to increases in spread in a number of ways.
That suggests that it was changes in gay and bisexual men's sexual behaviors, not the vaccine, that caused the outbreak to subside, researchers concluded.
The World Health Organization (WHO) has approved another COVID-19 vaccine for emergency use listing (EUL): Corbevax, a recombinant protein–based vaccine developed by scientists at Texas Children's Hospital and Baylor College of Medicine.
