Covid jab skipped by 44%, entire UK study finds
More than 7,000 Covid-related hospital admissions could have been prevented in the UK in the summer of 2022 if the population had received the full number of jabs recommended, according to research in The Lancet.
Some 44% of the UK population was under-vaccinated, with younger people among the most likely to skip doses.
In a first, health records for everyone over five in the UK were analysed. The same approach could now be used to understand other diseases.
The entire population of the UK is 67 million, and all those over the age of five had their anonymised electronic health data analysed for The Lancet study.
With about 40,000 severe hospital admissions related to Covid during that summer, the research estimates that more than 7,000 - 17% - would have been avoided if everyone had taken up the offer of the vaccine and booster doses for which they were eligible.
Source: BBC News, 16 January 2024