September 17, 2021

expert reaction to CO-CIN paper on hospital admissions and impact of vaccines

The government have published some new research on hospital admissions and the impact of COVID-19 vaccines.

Dr Peter English, Retired Consultant in Communicable Disease Control, Former Editor of Vaccines in Practice, Immediate past Chair of the BMA Public Health Medicine Committee, said:

“This paper describes different forms of primary vaccine failure, and provides data on hospital admissions looking at whether people had been vaccinated, and by type of vaccine failure.¹ Table B on page 3, for example, shows that initially most people had not been vaccinated, so most admissions were in people who had no immunity to the virus. As time goes by, increasing numbers of people were admitted who became ill despite having had one, and then later, having had two doses of vaccine. As you would expect given the high uptake of vaccination, particularly in the groups most at risk, the number of admissions falls, and the proportion admissions that are in people who have been vaccinated increased, as the number of unvaccinated people who could require admission drops.²

“The paper also describes the likelihood of vaccine failure by vaccination “tier”. I do not think the paper states how all of the tiers are defined, but it is clear that people with a number of risk factors are likely to generate a less effective immune response. (I note that the authors of this paper overlap with another paper, due to be published today (17 Sep 2021), on the QCovid risk calculator tool, so it may be that the data in this CO-CIN paper informed the QCovid tool.³

“The paper is likely to inform (and/or have informed) policy decisions on, for example, the value of booster vaccination.”

References

1. Egan C, Thorpe M, Knight S, Shaw C, McLean K, Baillie K, et al. CO-CIN: Hospital admission for COVID-19 and impact of vaccination, 9 September 2021. Research and analysis 2021; Updated 17 Sep 2021; Accessed: 2021 (17 Sep): (https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1018555/S1363_Hospital_Admission_for_COVID-19_and_impact_of_vaccination.pdf or via https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/co-cin-hospital-admission-for-covid-19-and-impact-of-vaccination-9-september-2021).
2. English PMB. Should we worry if an increasing proportion of Covid-19 cases are in people who have been vaccinated? . Peter English’s random musings [blog]. Selected Covid-19 vaccine Q&As 2021; Updated 27 Jun 2021; Accessed: 2021 (27 Jun): (https://peterenglish.blogspot.com/2021/06/selected-questions-and-answers-about_25.html).
3. Hippisley-Cox J, Coupland CA, Mehta N, Keogh RH, Diaz-Ordaz K, Khunti K, et al. Risk prediction of covid-19 related death and hospital admission in adults after covid-19 vaccination: national prospective cohort study. BMJ 2021.

‘Hospital Admission for COVID-19 and impact of vaccination: analysis of linked data from the National Immunisation Management Service (NIMS) and the Coronavirus Clinical Information Network (CO-CIN)’ by Conor Egan et al is posted as a pre-print publication on gov.uk (https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/co-cin-hospital-admission-for-covid-19-and-impact-of-vaccination-9-september-2021)

All our previous output on this subject can be seen at this weblink:

www.sciencemediacentre.org/tag/covid-19

Declared interests

None received.