Prof Jonathan Van-Tam, the deputy chief medical officer for England, told BBC News a few minutes ago that new research suggests that vaccines have prevented 22 million coronavirus infections and 60,000 deaths in England.
He was speaking shortly before the publication of Public Health England’s
latest vaccine surveillance report (pdf), which contains the figures. It says:
Estimates suggest that 60,000 deaths and 22,057,000 infections have been prevented as a result of the Covid-19 vaccination programme, up to 9 July.
This calculation is based on how many people would have got infected, or died, without the vaccines assuming no other interventions. But of course if the vaccines were not available, then it is almost certain that much tougher lockdown measures would have remained in force.