Vaccines halved Italy’s COVID-19 death toll —report

ROME — Italy's COVID-19 vaccine campaign prevented some 150,000 deaths, slashing the country's death toll by almost half, the national health institute (ISS) said Wednesday.

Vaccines also prevented eight million cases of COVID-19, over 500,000 hospitalizations and more than 55,000 coronavirus cases in intensive care, the ISS said in a report.

The report covers the period between December 27, 2020, when the vaccination campaign began and January 31 of this year, using a methodology initially developed for flu vaccines, it said.

Italy has been one of the countries worst affected by the  pandemic, with more than 160,000 deaths reported since February 2020, the second-highest toll in Europe after Britain.

To date, almost 90 percent of those over the age of 12 have been fully vaccinated, and just over 34 percent of children aged five to eleven. — Agence France-Presse