COVID-19 Vaccination and Rates of Infections, Hospitalizations, ICU Admissions, and Deaths in the European Economic Area during Autumn 2021 Wave of SARS-CoV-2.

Dominika Sikora,Piotr Rzymski

doi:10.3390/vaccines10030437

Dominika Sikora, Piotr Rzymski

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3390/vaccines10030437

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Journal: Vaccines	Publication Date: Mar 12, 2022
Citations: 23	License type: CC BY 4.0

Affiliation: Poznan University of Medical Sciences

Abstract

The COVID-19 vaccination campaigns were met with a varying level of vaccine hesitancy in Europe. We analyzed the potential relationships between COVID-19 vaccine coverage in different countries of the European Economic Area and rates of infection, hospitalizations, admissions to intensive care units (ICU), and deaths during the autumn 2021 SARS-CoV-2 wave (September−December). Significant negative correlations between infection rates and the percentage of fully vaccinated individuals were found during September, October, and November, but not December. The loss of this protective effect in December is likely due to the emergence of the omicron (B.1.1.529) variant, better adapted to evade vaccine-induced humoral immunity. For every considered month, the negative linear associations between the vaccine coverage and mean number of hospitalizations (r= −0.61 to −0.88), the mean number of ICU admissions (r= −0.62 to −0.81), and death rate (r= −0.64 to −0.84) were observed. The results highlight that vaccines provided significant benefits during autumn 2021. The vaccination of unvaccinated individuals should remain the primary strategy to decrease the hospital overloads, severe consequences of COVID-19, and deaths.

Highlights

The COVID-19 pandemic has been met with an unprecedented and rapid scientific response resulting in the emergence of diagnostic methods and a better understanding of viral pathogenicity, immune response to the infection, and potential therapeutic targets [1].a great effort has been put forward to develop vaccine candidates using various approaches, including classical and more innovative ones
The COVID-19 vaccines were made available with unseen speed due to years of basic and applied research, technological advances and platforms that enable the rapid development of candidates, significant funding, running multiple trials in parallel, and regulatory agencies working at an extraordinary pace [2]
Until the end of 2021, four COVID-19 vaccines were approved in the European Union: two mRNA vaccines, BNT162b2 (BioNTech/Pfizer, Germany, Mainz/New York, NY, USA) and mRNA-1273 (Moderna, Cambridge, MA, USA), given as two doses 21 and 28 days apart, respectively, as well as two adenoviral vector vaccines: AZD1222 (Oxford/AstraZeneca, UK/Sweden), administered as two doses 4–12 weeks apart, and Ad26.COV2.S Janssen/Johnson & Johnson, Leiden, Netherlands/New Brunswick, NJ, USA), given as a single dose

Summary

Introduction

The COVID-19 pandemic has been met with an unprecedented and rapid scientific response resulting in the emergence of diagnostic methods and a better understanding of viral pathogenicity, immune response to the infection, and potential therapeutic targets [1]. A great effort has been put forward to develop vaccine candidates using various approaches, including classical (inactivated, live-attenuated, recombinant vaccines) and more innovative (mRNA, DNA, adenoviral vector vaccines) ones. The COVID-19 vaccines were made available with unseen speed due to years of basic and applied research, technological advances and platforms that enable the rapid development of candidates (e.g., mRNA), significant funding, running multiple trials in parallel, and regulatory agencies working at an extraordinary pace [2].

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