COVID-19 vaccines prevented the deaths of almost 20 million people across the world in the first year they were introduced, research suggests.
The first modelling study looking into the effect of vaccination globally, by the Imperial College London, found 19.8 million out of a potential 31.4 million deaths were prevented in the year between December 2020 and 2021.
More than 60 percent of those lives saved were from high and upper-middle-income countries - highlighting the inequalities in access to vaccines.
Almost 600,000 more people could have been saved if World Health Organization vaccination targets had been met, the study found.
The research was published in The Lancet Infectious Diseases journal.
