In the middle of the summer Covid-19 wave in Austria and neighboring countries, studies published in the USA show the very positive effect of the vaccination: The rate of long Covid cases is reduced, a booster showed a good protective effect on top US basketball players and their teams from infections. So far, according to the studies, the vaccines in the United States have prevented around 60 percent of impending pandemic deaths.
The three publications can be found in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), one of the most respected medical publications. Elena Azzolini from the IRCCS Humanitas Research Hospital in Milan and her Italian co-authors recently published a scientific study there on the effect of Covid-19 vaccination on the occurrence of long-term health problems (Long Covid) after illness (doi:10.1001/jama .2022.11691).
Health workers observed in Italy
Between March 2020 and April 2022, workers were observed in nine Italian health facilities. Regular PCR tests were carried out. A total of 2,560 people took part in the study. 739 (29 percent) developed Covid-19 disease. After that, 31 percent showed signs of Long Covid. The proportion was 48.1 percent in the first Covid-19 wave, only to fall to 16.5 percent by the third wave at the end of the observation period.
However, each dose of vaccine made a difference: 48.1 percent of those unvaccinated with Covid-19 developed long covid, 30 percent with the disease after one vaccination, 17.4 percent after two vaccine doses and finally 16 percent after three vaccinations and still developing the disease .
Booster effect in NBA athletes
Caroline Tai from the pharmaceutical information service IQVIA (Durham/North Carolina) and her co-authors from Johns Hopkins University (Baltimore) and from the National Basketball Association (NBA) also devoted themselves to a special group of people. They enrolled 2,613 basketball players and members of their teams in their study (doi:10.1001/jama.2022.9479). They had to be vaccinated at least twice by October 1, 2021, and they had to have received the third partial vaccination against Covid-19 by January 5, 2022. The participants in the study were on average 33.7 years old, healthy, but – basketball as a team sport – spent a lot of time training and playing together indoors. In the end, 85 percent had finally received the third partial vaccination.
The effect, according to the authors: The third partial vaccination against Covid-19 reduced the risk of SARS-CoV-2 by 57 percent. Symptomatic infections were even 61 percent rarer. “This study showed that in young, healthy and well-vaccinated groups of people with frequent checks for SARS-CoV-2, a ‘booster’ vaccination (third partial vaccination; note) led to significantly fewer infections.”
58 percent fewer deaths
A scientific study estimating the number of Covid-19 infections, hospital admissions from the disease and deaths from severe illness, conducted by Molly Steele of the US National Centers for Disease Control (CDC/Atlanta) and their co-authors. Before the possibility of vaccination against SARS-CoV-2 in the USA, there had already been 16 million cases of Covid-19 and 310,000 deaths between January 19, 2020 and December 12 of the same year.
The model calculation, taking into account the vaccinations that started in the USA on December 12, 2020, led to the following results for the period from the beginning of December 2020 to the end of September 2021: “The Covid-19 vaccination has an estimated 27 million infections with SARS-CoV-2 prevented, plus around 1.6 million hospital admissions and 235,000 deaths.The relative effectiveness of the Covid-19 vaccination was finally calculated for September 2021: 52 percent fewer infections, 56 percent fewer hospital admissions and 58 percent fewer deaths than without the SARS-CoV-2 vaccines would have been.
Source: Nachrichten
