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(LifeSiteNews) — A public health and geographic analysis professor at Harvard University recently published a study that found COVID-19 vaccination rates do not correspond with lower infection rates.

“The sole reliance on vaccination as a primary strategy to mitigate COVID-19 and its adverse consequences needs to be re-examined, especially considering the Delta (B.1.617.2) variant and the likelihood of future variants,” Professor S.V. Subramanian wrote in his September 30 paper, published in the European Journal of Epidemiology.

Subramanian, a professor of Population Health and Geography at Harvard and chair of the university’s Faculty Advisory Group for the Center for Geographic Analysis, has a background is in quantitative analysis and holds degrees in geography and economics.

His research looked at 68 different countries and almost 3,000 counties in the United States. “At the country-level, there appears to be no discernable relationship between percentage of population fully vaccinated and new COVID-19 cases in the last 7 days,” Subramanian said.

“In fact, the trend line suggests a marginally positive association such that countries with higher percentage of population fully vaccinated have higher COVID-19 cases per 1 million people,” he wrote.

While he encouraged other mitigation measures, the professor still encouraged vaccination programs to continue, but “with humility and respect.”

In addition to his conclusion based on a wide-ranging review of COVID data, Professor Subramanian highlighted one example of a country’s inability to control the virus that could cause further concern for other inoculation programs.

“Notably, Israel with over 60% of their population fully vaccinated had the highest COVID-19 cases per 1 million people in the last 7 days,” Subramanian said. The Middle Eastern country has found that Pfizer’s trial data, which showed a 96 percent efficacy, is one-third of that. “[T]he effectiveness of 2 doses of the BNT162b2 (Pfizer-BioNTech) vaccine against preventing COVID-19 infection was reported to be 39%, substantially lower than the trial efficacy of 96%,” he wrote, based on a report released by the country’s Ministry of Health.

The paper provided other examples.

“The lack of a meaningful association between percentage population fully vaccinated and new COVID-19 cases is further exemplified, for instance, by comparison of Iceland and Portugal,” the paper said. “Both countries have over 75% of their population fully vaccinated and have more COVID-19 cases per 1 million people than countries such as Vietnam and South Africa that have around 10% of their population fully vaccinated.”

This is not the first time the efficacy of the COVID shots has been called into question.

Bulgaria and Romania, for example, experienced a low-infection summer despite its low COVID inoculation rate, according to a LifeSiteNews analysis.

Denmark, which continues to sit near the top of European Union inoculation rankings, had similar infection rates to Bulgaria and Romania.

Israeli health officials have previously said the COVID jabs are not completely effective.

Kobi Haviv, director of the Herzog Hospital, said “85-90% of hospitalizations” were among “fully-vaccinated” citizens during an August 5 interview. “Unfortunately, the vaccine … as they say, its effectiveness is waning.”

“We have some of the highest rates for both infections and vaccinations,” Israeli epidemiologist Nadav Davidovitch said.

Subramanian’s Harvard colleague Martin Kulldorff previously highlighted another study out of Israel that found naturally immune individuals, those who had antibodies due to a prior COVID infection, were better able to fend off re-infection than those considered “fully-vaccinated.”

“[V]accine mandates are not only scientific nonsense, they are also discriminatory and unethical,” he concluded.

In August, The Blaze senior editor Daniel Horowitz identified 15 separate studies that show natural immunity is more effective against coronavirus than the COVID shots.

LifeSiteNews has produced an extensive COVID-19 vaccines resources page. View it here.