High Vaccination Rate Can Reduce Covid-19 Cases, Control The Pandemic: Data Scientists

Increasing the rate of vaccination is crucial to the future course of the pandemic, suggested Mayo Clinic data scientists based on the trends predicted by a computer model.

Maximum vaccination is important to reduce Covid-19 Cases.

India began its third phase of vaccination drive on May 1, allowing people age 18 and above to get the vaccine shot, amidst the second wave of the coronavirus pandemic. But some states have postponed the vaccination of people in the 18-44 age group due to shortage of vaccine doses. As of today morning, India has administered a total of 15,68,16,031 vaccine doses to its people, according to the health ministry. Meanwhile, the country saw an increase of as many as 3.92 lakh fresh cases in the last 24 hours and reported 3689 deaths, the highest daily death Covid toll so far, as per the health ministry data updated on Sunday morning. What strategy will help India best tackle the soaring numbers of Covid-19 cases and control the pandemic? Speeding up the vaccination process may help. A computer model developed by the Mayo Clinic data scientists to predict trends for COVID-19 cases has shown the importance of a high rate of vaccination in reducing case numbers and controlling the pandemic.

In a study paper published in Mayo Clinic Proceedings, the data scientists underscored how vaccination is helping Minnesota in keeping the current level of positive cases from becoming an emergency that could overwhelm ICUs and lead to more illness and death. They also outlined how increasing the rate of vaccination is crucial to the future course of the pandemic.

Without vaccines, more Covid patients would have landed in ICUs

Without Covid-19 vaccines, there would be a peak of more than 800 patients in hospital ICUs in Minnesota this spring, the Mayo researchers estimated. This would be more than double the number of Minnesota COVID-19 patients who were hospitalized in ICUs on Dec. 1, at the peak of the surge last year. "The absence of vaccinations in the current environment would have been likely to result in by far the largest surge to date," they wrote in the paper reported by ScienceDaily.

The study estimates that had Minnesota achieved vaccination of 75% of the population by early April, the 7-day average of cases per 100,000 residents, the number of COVID-19 patients hospitalized and the number in ICUs would plummet by early July. As shown by the computer model, this level of vaccination would completely suppress the growth and immediately drive cases and hospitalizations down to very low levels, the authors stated.