More than 4,700 lives lost to Covid in Florida and Texas could have been saved if those states had higher vaccination rates, according to a study released on Thursday.
The study from the Commonwealth Fund, a private health care endowment, was conducted by an international team of epidemiologists and data scientists. The analysis compared the Covid hospitalization rates of states like Vermont and Connecticut, which have fully vaccinated roughly three in four adults, with those of Florida and Texas, where roughly only one in two adults are fully vaccinated.
“Outbreaks are predominantly affecting states that have relatively low vaccination coverage, with nearly a third of recent cases occurring in Florida and Texas,” researchers wrote, warning that the highly infectious delta variant would only worsen matters.
The estimated toll: higher vaccination rates in these two states could have prevented more than 70,000 hospitalizations and 4,700 deaths by the end of July.
“We found that enhanced vaccination would have markedly curbed the rise of cases in Florida and Texas — averting more than 460,000 cases. Since the start of vaccination on Dec. 12, 2020, until July 31, 2021, Florida and Texas have reported more than 1.5 million and 1.7 million cases, respectively,” researchers wrote.
“Achieving 74 percent vaccination coverage by July 31, 2021, could have reduced the case count to approximately 1.3 million cases in Florida and 1.5 million cases in Texas.”
The study says more than 7 million Florida residents and 9 million Texas residents who are eligible for the vaccine remain unvaccinated, and many of them are in danger.
“If estimates through the end of July hold true, many of these people will suffer through hospitalizations, and some will likely die — making more rigorous vaccination campaigns in those states all the more imperative,” they conclude.
As cases surge across the country, experts told NBC News this delta-variant driven rise was “completely preventable” and warn it will get worse before it gets better, with the return of long testing lines and dwindling ICU beds in hard hit Southern states.
In Florida, amid heated debate over requiring masks for children as classes are set to resume within days, the federal government this week sent hundreds of ventilators to help the state respond to its record number of Covid hospitalizations.