While it’s clear vaccines led to a drop in fatalities during the most recent delta variant-driven waves compared with earlier bouts with the virus, some countries saw deaths fall to a greater degree than others, an outcome scientists still don’t have answers for.
Countries like Germany, Denmark and the UK have seen Covid deaths fall to roughly a tenth of previous peaks, according to Bloomberg calculations using data compiled by Johns Hopkins University. In Israel, Greece and the US, fatalities fell but remained more than half of the previous peaks.
A number of countries — mostly developing economies with less capable healthcare systems — relied on Chinese or Russian vaccines that have proven less effective than the mRNA shots used in the US and throughout Europe.
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The US’s resistance to lockdown measures and the rapid recovery of movement and travel in the first half of 2021 may have contributed to its delta death count peaking at a higher proportion of its pre-delta level compared to European countries.
“There are lots of moving parts in all these places, and things are moving in different directions,” said David Fisman, an infectious disease doctor at the University of Toronto.
