In the midst of the summer corona wave, three research teams attested that vaccination against the Sars-CoV-2 virus has an extremely positive effect: vaccines not only prevent infections, serious strokes, hospitalizations and deaths, but also reduce the risk. to suffer long-term consequences.
Until now, it was unclear whether vaccines would reduce the risk of other acute and long-term consequences of a coronavirus infection. The condition called Long Covid is accompanied, among other things, by weeks to months of exhaustion, forgetfulness and a feeling of being constantly overwhelmed, shortness of breath and tiredness. According to the US teams, vaccines are effective against the disease, and this effectiveness increases with the number of doses.
All three publications can be found in the Journal of the American Medical Association (Jama), one of the most respected medical journals. Elena Azzolini of the IRCCS Humanitas Research Hospital in Milan and her Italian co-authors have published a scientific study on the effect of Covid-19 vaccination on the occurrence of long-term health problems caused by Long Covid after an illness.
Nearly a quarter of a million fewer deaths in the US
Between March 2020 and April 2022, staff at nine Italian healthcare facilities were observed using regular PCR tests. A total of 2,560 people participated in the study. Of these, 739, or 29%, developed Covid-19 disease, resulting in signs of Long Covid in a total of 31% of patients. That proportion improved over time: it was 48.1% in the first wave of Covid-19, finally dropping to 16.5% in the third wave at the end of the observation period.
Every dose of vaccine made a difference: 48.1% of those unvaccinated with Covid-19 developed Covid-19. 30 percent with the disease suffered from this condition after just one vaccine dose, 17.4 percent after two vaccine doses and finally 16 percent after three vaccine doses and still developed the disease.
The US pharmaceutical information service IQVIA, Johns Hopkins University in the US state of Maryland and the National Basketball Society in the US dedicated themselves to a special group. The team enrolled 2,613 basketball players and members of their teams. Tested people should have been vaccinated at least twice by October 1, 2021, and the third partial Covid-19 vaccination by January 5, 2022. Participants averaged 33.7 years and were healthy, but with the basketball as a team sport, they spent a lot of time training and playing together indoors. By the end of the study period, 85% had received the third point.
The effect according to the authors: the third partial vaccination reduced the risk of asymptomatic infections by 57%. Symptomatic infections were even 61 percent rarer. “This study showed that in groups of young, healthy, well-vaccinated people with frequent controls for Sars-CoV-2, a booster led to significantly fewer infections,” summarizes study leader Caroline Tai of IQVIA.
A study to estimate the number of Covid-19 infections, hospital admissions due to the illness and deaths from severe stroke, carried out by a team led by Molly, is based on large data sets for the entire country for the period from 1 December 2020 to September 30, 2021 Steele of the US State Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta.
16 million cases of Covid-19 and 310,000 deaths were recorded in the US before vaccination against Sars-CoV-2 between January 19 and December 12, 2020. Model calculation, taking into account the vaccination campaign initiated in the US as of December 12, 2020, shows significant results by the end of September 2021: 1.6 million hospitalizations and 235,000 deaths averted,” says Steele.
The relative effectiveness of Covid-19 vaccination was finally calculated for September 2021. Accordingly, there were 52% fewer infections, 56% fewer hospital admissions and 58% fewer deaths than without vaccines.
A German vaccination study shows why infections still happen. So how well the vaccine protects depends on the strength of the antibody response someone develops against the virus, and this varies from person to person. The largest German vaccination study, carried out by the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Duisburg-Essen, has been ongoing for more than a year.
Why Breakthrough Infections Still Exist
The research team regularly took blood samples after the first, second and third vaccinations and determined the amount of antibodies against the Sars-CoV-2 virus – known as antibody titers. In addition, participants answered questions about their health status and whether corona infections occurred despite vaccination.
The research team published the first results of the study in the renowned journal “Frontiers in Immunology”, which included data from 1,391 participants. In the period from late November 2021 to early March 2022, 102 people, or seven percent, were infected with the omicron variant of the coronavirus, despite the boost. Most infections occurred in the private sphere.
“The good thing is that in all those infected, the illness was short-lived and mild, similar to a cold,” says Winfried Siffert, head of the Essen Institute of Pharmacogenetics. Therefore, the fourth point must be worthwhile. (Husa)