ArticleHealth affairs (Project Hope)2023
COVID-19 Boosters: If The US Had Matched Israel's Speed And Take-Up, An Estimated 29,000 US Lives Would Have Been Saved.
Article in Health affairs (Project Hope), 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 6 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
6 citing papers in PubMed.
- Article
- COVID-19 Vaccine Effectiveness Against Mortality in the Omicron Period: Evidence from Linked Mortality and Vaccination Records.Vaccines · 2025Article
- Prehospital respiratory interventions during six waves of COVID-19: results from Israel's Emergency Medical Services system.BMC emergency medicine · 2025Article
- Beyond the Pandemic Era: Recent Advances and Efficacy of SARS-CoV-2 Vaccines Against Emerging Variants of Concern.Vaccines · 2025Review
- The disappearing COVID-Naïve Population and comparative Roche vs. Abbott Test sensitivity: evidence from antibody seroprevalence in Milwaukee County, Wisconsin.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- Vaccinating against a Novel Pathogen: A Critical Review of COVID-19 Vaccine Effectiveness Evidence.Microorganisms · 2023Review
Corrections and comments
- Comment on
Authors and funding
10 authors.
Funding
Abstract
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.
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What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.