2023-05-23 09:16:44
The international team led by David Gómez-Varela from the Department of Pharmaceuticals has investigated whether and to what extent Covid 19 vaccinations that are administered also protect particularly vulnerable people from dying, in whom an infection has already caused them to need oxygen therapy Sciences of the University of Vienna viewed using data from Spain and Argentina.
Different studies so far
Their analysis included information from almost 21,500 such patients who were ventilated in 148 hospitals (111 in Spain, 37 in Argentina) between January 2020 and May 2022 due to corona disease, according to the work.
The fact that the vaccines, which are now available in multiple versions, greatly reduce the likelihood of having to be treated in hospital with a Covid 19 infection and lower the death rate is well documented. In the case of people who, however, are already at high risk of having a severe course due to old age or an immune system attacked by previous illnesses, or who can hardly build up immune protection through vaccinations, the data situation is less clear, according to a press release from the university Vienna.
So far, some studies that have looked at whether a Covid vaccination also gives people who have a more severe course of the disease a higher chance of survival have found hardly any differences between the groups. Some evaluations showed no or sometimes even the opposite effects, which also led to many controversies surrounding the highly emotional topic of vaccination. However, there are many question marks regarding these studies, for example with regard to group sizes and possible selection effects, as the scientists state in their publication.
Three percent of patients vaccinated
Therefore, the group led by Gómez-Varela kept to the largest possible data set, which the team evaluated retrospectively. Of the more than 21,000 patients who needed oxygen, just over three percent had been vaccinated at least once during the study period: 338 had received a dose of a Covid 19 vaccine and 379 were fully immunized.
In a direct comparison of the groups, there was initially no significant difference in this study either: the mortality rate among the unvaccinated with a more severe course and among the vaccinated was very close to each other at around 20 percent, as the researchers state.
They then looked at which previous illnesses people from both groups already had and calculated the effects that had, for example, the presence of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), cancer, diabetes, heart disease, asthma or other diseases. Taking these aspects into account, the mortality rate in the vaccinated group was 4.3 percentage points lower than in the unvaccinated group.
Study: 22 percent of vaccine-preventable deaths
In other words: “22 percent of all deaths in hospitalized and oxygen-dependent people would have been avoidable” if all patients had been vaccinated, says Gómez-Varela. Protection from vaccination was significantly higher in people under the age of 65 or in people who had received multiple doses of the vaccine. According to the scientists, these findings should be taken into account in future vaccination plans.
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