TY - JOUR
T1 - COVID-19 Boosters
T2 - If The US Had Matched Israel’s Speed And Take-Up, An Estimated 29,000 US Lives Would Have Been Saved
AU - Black, Bernard
AU - Atanasov, Vladimir
AU - Glatman-Freedman, Aharona
AU - Keinan-Boker, Lital
AU - Reichman, Amnon
AU - Franchi, Lorenzo
AU - Meurer, John
AU - Luo, Qian
AU - Thaw, David B.
AU - Moghtaderi, Ali
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2023, Project HOPE. All rights reserved.
PY - 2023/12
Y1 - 2023/12
N2 - Israel was the first country to launch COVID-19 boosters, in late July 2021, with strong public health messaging. The booster campaign reversed rising infection rates from the Delta variant and reduced hospitalizations and deaths. The US booster rollout was slower, and public health messaging was mixed. We used the Israeli experience to ask the counterfactual question: How many lives could the US have saved if it had authorized boosters sooner? We estimated that through June 30, 2022, if the US had moved at Israel’s speed and booster take-up percentages, it would have saved 29,000 lives. US regulatory caution, in the middle of a pandemic, thus had a large, avoidable cost. Yet the US booster rollout still avoided 42,000 deaths. Moving more slowly to approve boosters, as some advocated, would have cost many additional lives.
AB - Israel was the first country to launch COVID-19 boosters, in late July 2021, with strong public health messaging. The booster campaign reversed rising infection rates from the Delta variant and reduced hospitalizations and deaths. The US booster rollout was slower, and public health messaging was mixed. We used the Israeli experience to ask the counterfactual question: How many lives could the US have saved if it had authorized boosters sooner? We estimated that through June 30, 2022, if the US had moved at Israel’s speed and booster take-up percentages, it would have saved 29,000 lives. US regulatory caution, in the middle of a pandemic, thus had a large, avoidable cost. Yet the US booster rollout still avoided 42,000 deaths. Moving more slowly to approve boosters, as some advocated, would have cost many additional lives.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85178553653&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1377/hlthaff.2023.00718
DO - 10.1377/hlthaff.2023.00718
M3 - Article
C2 - 38048511
AN - SCOPUS:85178553653
SN - 0278-2715
VL - 42
SP - 1747
EP - 1757
JO - Health Affairs
JF - Health Affairs
IS - 12
ER -