Credit: Unsplash / CC0 Public Domain
Even when vaccines against COVID-19 fail to prevent hospitalization, they appear to significantly reduce the risk of intensive care and death compared to non-vaccinated patients, according to a cohort study compared with more than 20,000 adults hospitalized in Ontario between January. 2021 and January 2022, presenting at this year’s European Congress of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases (ECCMID) in Lisbon, Portugal (April 23-26). The study was conducted by Alicia Grima and Kiera Murrison of the University of Toronto, Ontario, Canada and colleagues.
“The good news from this study is that even when hospitalized with COVID-19, both partial and complete vaccination reduces the risk of needing intensive care and death,” says Murrison.
The rapid development of safe and effective vaccines against the SARS-CoV-2 virus has drastically reduced the severity of hospitalizations and deaths associated with COVID-19. However, the risk of sudden severe COVID-19 after vaccination remains, especially among groups at higher risk of severe disease.
Researchers set out to determine whether the risks of admission and death in the intensive care unit (ICU) were reduced by vaccination, even in individuals whose vaccination had failed to prevent hospitalization. Using data from Canada’s Case and Contact Management Database and the Ontario Vaccination and Reporting Database (COVAxON), they conducted a time-matched group of 20,064 adults (3,353 vaccinated and 16,711 unvaccinated) hospitalized with COVID. 19 between 1 January 2021 and 5 January 2021. 2022. The study was limited to adults with a first infection with COVID-19. The majority of participants (69%) are aged 50 or over, and most are men (54%).
As the dominant variant and public health response changed over time, each vaccinated individual was compared to up to five unvaccinated individuals based on the date of the SARS-CoV-2 positive infection test. The simulation was used to assess the risk of admission to the intensive care unit (adjusted for age group, sex, health worker, long-term care, underlying disease and infection variant) and death (adjusted for age group, sex, long-term care, comorbidity, and infectious option). Additional non-comparative analyzes were performed to identify differences in the effects of the vaccines.
The researchers found that one, two or three doses of vaccination significantly reduced the risk of intensive care and death. And there is a dose-response relationship between vaccine doses, with each additional dose reducing the likelihood of being admitted to the intensive care unit by 34% and the chances of death by 22%. No significant differences in risk were observed, regardless of the variant of infection.
“Even with the reduced efficacy of infection vaccines with new variants of concern, our findings show that vaccines remain a vital tool in reducing COVID-19 intensive care and death,” says Grima.
This is an observational study, so no definite conclusions can be drawn as to the cause and effect, and due to the relatively recent emergence of the Omicron variant and the lag, the results lack statistical strength to assess Omicron-specific protections. Also, the authors failed to guarantee that the observed effects were not due at least in part to residual confusion. Finally, they cannot rule out other unmeasured factors, such as a previous natural infection with SARS-CoV-2 in the unvaccinated cohort that may have affected the results.
Pregnant women with COVID-19 face a higher risk of hospitalization and admission to the intensive care unit, which increases the incidence of vaccination
Provided by the European Society of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases
Citation: Even partially vaccinated persons hospitalized with COVID-19 may be at lower risk of being admitted to the intensive care unit, death (2022, 25 April) extracted on 25 April 2022 from
This document is subject to copyright. Except for any fair transaction for the purpose of private research or study, no part may be reproduced without written permission. The content is provided for informational purposes only.
Add Comment