An I-U study calculates Indiana’s coronavirus death toll would be nearly three-thousand people worse without the vaccine.

The study in the journal Health Affairs is the first peer-reviewed attempt to calculate the vaccine’s effect. Researchers at I-U and the RAND Corporation compared the pre-vaccine trend line to what actually happened from near the start of vaccinations in December to early May, while controlling for other factors like weather.

Nearly six-thousand Hoosiers died of COVID in that span. I-U-P-U-I economist Sumedha Gupta says the study estimates it would have been close to nine-thousand without the vaccine. Nationwide, the study concludes vaccinations saved more than 139-thousand lives.

Gupta says researchers were surprised at how quickly the vaccine effect showed up. While the vaccine is now available to anyone 12 and up, different states set different orders of priority for the vaccine when it was still scarce. Indiana vaccinated health care workers and first responders first, then expanded eligibility based on age. Because of the slow rollout, Gupta says researchers expected more of a lag, but says the trend lines begin to diverge noticeably in February.

Indiana’s rate of one fewer death for about every 19-hundred Hoosiers ranks 16th-highest per capita. The estimates vary widely by state, from about one of every 900 New Yorkers to one of every nine-thousand Hawaiians. Gupta says in most cases, the improvements track closely with the rate of vaccination, though there are some outliers — Hawaii and Massachusetts had similar high vaccination rates but different end results.

The study calculates not only the vaccine’s health impact, but the economic impact of factors like continued earning potential and lower medical expenses. The study estimates fewer deaths translates to between 600-billion and one-point-four-trillion dollars.

Indiana Department of Health statistics say 86-percent of Indiana COVID-19 deaths since July 1 and 95-percent of hospitalizations have been unvaccinated.