Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2022 Feb 18;10(2):329.
doi: 10.3390/vaccines10020329.

Is Mandatory Vaccination in Population over 60 Adequate to Control the COVID-19 Pandemic in E.U.?

Nikolaos P Rachaniotis  1 , Thomas K Dasaklis  2 , Filippos Fotopoulos  3 , Michalis Chouzouris  4 , Vana Sypsa  5 , Antigone Lyberaki  6 , Platon Tinios  4
Affiliations

Is Mandatory Vaccination in Population over 60 Adequate to Control the COVID-19 Pandemic in E.U.?

Nikolaos P Rachaniotis et al. Vaccines (Basel). .

Abstract

Vaccine hesitancy, which potentially leads to the refusal or delayed acceptance of COVID-19 vaccines, is considered a key driver of the increasing death toll from the pandemic in the EU. The European Commission and several member states' governments are either planning or have already directly or indirectly announced mandatory vaccination for individuals aged over 60, the group which has repeatedly proved to be the most vulnerable. In this paper, an assessment of this strategy's benefits is attempted by deriving a metric for the potential gains of vaccination mandates that can be used to compare EU member states. This is completed by examining the reduction in Standard Expected Years of Life Lost (SEYLL) per person for the EU population over 60 as a function of the member states' vaccination percentage in these ages. The publicly available data and results of the second iteration of the SHARE COVID-19 survey on the acceptance of COVID-19 vaccines, conducted during the summer of 2021, are used as inputs.

Keywords: COVID-19; SEYLL; mandatory vaccination.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
SHARE COVID-19 survey vaccination status for the 60+ sample.
Figure 2
Figure 2
SEYLLd (in years) for the 27 EU countries.
Figure 3
Figure 3
SEYLLp (in days) for the population over 60 in the 27 EU countries from 25 May 2021 to 25 November 2021 vs. their percentage vaccination coverage.
Figure 4
Figure 4
Differences between the 27 EU countries’ SEYLLp for the 60+ population by 25 November 2021, and their estimated respective values in the case of a mandatory vaccination using SHARE COVID-19 upper vaccination limits.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

Similar articles

See all similar articles

Cited by

References

    1. Hoffmann C., Wolf E. Older age groups and country-specific case fatality rates of COVID-19 in Europe, USA and Canada. Infection. 2021;49:111–116. doi: 10.1007/s15010-020-01538-w. - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Gallè F., Sabella E.A., Roma P., Da Molin G., Diella G., Montagna M.T., Ferracuti S., Liguori G., Orsi G.B., Napoli C. Acceptance of COVID-19 Vaccination in the Elderly: A Cross-Sectional Study in Southern Italy. Vaccines. 2021;9:1222. doi: 10.3390/vaccines9111222. - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Chapman L.A., Barnard R.C., Russell T.W., Abbott S., Van Zandvoort K., Davies N.G., Kucharski A.J. Unexposed populations and potential COVID-19 burden in European countries. medRxiv. 2021 doi: 10.1101/2021.11.10.21266166. - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Burki T. COVID-19 vaccine mandates in Europe. Lancet Infect. Dis. 2022;22:27–28. doi: 10.1016/S1473-3099(21)00776-3. - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Getz W.M., Vissat L.L., Salter R. A Contact-Explicit Covid-19 Epidemic and Response Assessment Model. medRxiv. 2020 doi: 10.1101/2020.07.16.20155812. - DOI

LinkOut - more resources