The burden of COVID-19 in French Guiana: Vaccine-averted deaths, hospitalizations and costs

OBJECTIVES: French Guiana, the least-vaccinated French territory, also has the lowest COVID-19 vaccination coverage in Latin America. We aimed to estimate how many deaths, hospitalizations and costs the vaccines had and could have avoided. METHODS: We calculated the Number Needed to Vaccinate to prevent one death per year, 1 standard hospitalization, 1 Intensive Care Unit admission given the mean incidence numbers of the past 6 months, and divided the number of persons vaccinated to estimate how many deaths and hospitalizations had been avoided in French Guiana at that time. RESULTS: The crude number needed to vaccinate to prevent one death per year, the crude number needed to vaccinate to prevent one hospitalization per 6 months were computed Based on our observed incidence and ICU admission rate, the crude number needed to vaccinate to prevent one ICU admission per 6 months. After 6 months with an incidence exceeding 400 per million inhabitants, and 148 observed deaths, we estimate that vaccination avoided 46 deaths (IC95%=43.5–48.7). If the number of vaccinated persons had reached the same proportion as mainland France, 141 deaths per year could have been prevented (IC95%=131.9–147.6). With 2085 hospitalization and 370 ICU admissions during the same period, we estimate that the current albeit low vaccination rate avoided 300 hospital (IC95%=280–313) and 77 (IC95%=72–81) ICU admissions. With the same vaccination rates as mainland France, we estimate that 900 hospitalizations and 231 ICU admissions would have been avoided. Similarly, there would have been 139 ICU admission (instead of 370). CONCLUSIONS: In sparsely populated French Guiana these numbers are quite substantial and framing the vaccine benefits and wasted opportunities using such concrete numbers may help convincing undecided persons to get vaccinated.