Vaccinations Reducing the Risk of Covid-19 Admissions to Scottish Hospitals
The study is the first to describe across an entire country the effect of the Pfizer and Oxford-AstraZeneca jabs in the community on preventing severe illness resulting in hospitalisation.
Reduced Hospitalisation
By the fourth week after receiving the initial dose, the Pfizer and Oxford- AstraZeneca where shown to reduce the risk of hospitalisation from Covid-19 by up to 85% and 94% respectively. Among those aged 80 years and over vaccination was associated with an 81% reduction in hospitalisation risk by the fourth week, when the results for both vaccines were combined.
These results are very encouraging and have given us great reasons to be optimistic for the future. We now have national evidence- across an entire country that vaccination provides protection against Covid-19 hospitalisation. Roll-out of the first vaccine dose now needs to be accelerated globally to help overcome this terrible disease.
Entire Population
As part of the EAVE II project, which uses patient data to track the pandemic and the vaccine roll out in real time, researchers from the Universities of Edinburgh, Strathclyde, Aberdeen, Glasgow and St Andrew's and Public Health Scotland analysed a data set covering the entire Scottish population of 5.4 million.
EAVE II a BREATHE- associated project, was set up in early 2020 in anticipation of vaccination efforts, ready to monitor their impact as soon as they became available.
Data on vaccine effect was gathered between 8 December and 15 February. During this period, 1.14 million vaccines were administered and 21% of the Scottish population had received a first dose based on Scottish Government prioritisation.
First Jab
The Pfizer vaccine has been received by 650,000 people and 490,000 have had the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine. Researchers analyses data for every week during this period- including GP records on vaccination, hospital admissions death registrations and laboratory test results, and compared the outcomes of those who had received their first jab with those who had not.
The study team say that the findings are applicable to other countries who are using the Pfizer and Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccines. They caution that the data does not allow for comparison between the two vaccines.