February 2022: Research looking at the uptake, effectiveness and waning protection of COVID-19 vaccinations in Welsh health care workers from December 2020 to September 2021. COVID-19 vaccine uptake, effectiveness, and waning in 82,959 health care workers: A national prospective cohort study in Wales Bedston, S.; Akbari, A.; Jarvis, C.I.; Lowthian, E.; et. al. Vaccine Journal Published online on 16 February 2022 Available via Elsevier at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.vaccine.2021.11.061 Plain English Summary Health care workers were one of the first groups of people to be offered COVID-19 vaccines. The vaccination programme in Wales began on 8 December 2020 with the Pfizer-BioNTech mRNA vaccine, BNT162b2. The Oxford-AstraZeneca adenoviral vaccine, ChAdOx1, later became available on 7 April 2021. On 20 Septermber 2021, healthcare workers started being offered booster dose vaccinations. Why did we do this research? Healthcare workers are more likely to be exposed to the SARS-CoV-2 than the rest of the population. To limit the disruption to our health care systems, it is important for us to understand the real-world effectiveness of vaccine protection given to our healthcare workers. Which is why in this study we wanted to look at: Uptake: Which healthcare workers are more likely to get the vaccine? Effectiveness: How much protection do the vaccines provide against infection? Waning: How long does the vaccine's protection last? What data did we use? We used national-scale data held within the Secure Anonymised Information Linkage (SAIL) Databank, starting from 7 December 2020 to 30 September 2021. The SAIL Databank allowed us to look at the linked, individual-level, electronic health data of nearly 83,000 Welsh healthcare workers. This included datasets on: Demographics (e.g. type of occupation: nursing and midwifery, clinical services, admin etc.) Location Laboratory Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) testing Vaccination records General Practitioner (GP) diagnoses Prescribed and dispensed medications Hospital admissions Mortality records Find out more about: SAIL Databank Find out more about: What is PCR? What did we find? Vaccine uptake How many healthcare workers got vaccinated? Overall, vaccine uptake was extremely high. 90% of Wales' healthcare workers were received one dose of a vaccine, and 86% received two. What vaccines were they given? 79% of healthcare workers were given the Pfizer vaccine (BNT162b2), 10% the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine (ChAdOx1), and less than 1% received Moderna (mRNA-1273). Were some types of healthcare workers more likely to get the vaccine than others? Yes. Although uptake was high overall, we did find that it varied across a range of factors such as a healthcare worker's age, job role and socioeconomic status. For example, healthcare workers who were between the ages of 50-59 or over 60 were 1.6 times more likely to get vaccinated than those aged 16-29. Also, medical and dental staff, and Allied Health Practitioners were 1.5 and 1.1 times more likely to get vaccinated than nursing and midwifery staff. We also found that people who were living in more deprived areas, members of a minority ethnic group, or had a non-patient facing role (e.g. admin) were less likely to get the vaccine. Vaccine effectiveness We found the effectiveness of BNT162b2 to be strong and consistent. It provided healthcare workers with 52% protection 3-6 weeks after the first dose, which rose to 86% 2 weeks after the second dose. However, we also found that this protection against serious outcomes waned, dropping to 53% after 22 weeks. Unfortunately, we could not account for SARS-CoV-2 variant status in our analyses. Current vaccines are known to be more effective against the Alpha variant, which dominated Wales between December 2020 and May 2021, than the Delta variant that took over in June 2021. Good protection was however still provided against Delta. Find out more about: Demographics, risk of hospital admission, and vaccine effectiveness of Delta Find our more about: Delta Vaccinations, infections and hospitalisations Why is this research important? Overall, our study shows that healthcare workers who were vaccinated at least once were less at risk of testing positive for SARS-CoV-2 infection, compared to those who were unvaccinated. We have also provided estimates of how this effectiveness may vary across a range of characteristics. This includes health care occupation, which has not been reported on in previous studies. To help ensure that all our healthcare workers are protected, we recommend that policy makers and practitioners use these results to refocus their efforts in tackling vaccine hesitancy. Our results also support the growing body of evidence demonstrating that vaccine protection wanes. We, therefore, support the roll-out of booster dose vaccines. Hear more from our partners and researchers Swansea University have published a news article featuring quotes from some of our lead researchers. To find out more and download an infographic of this research, follow the link below: Swansea University: COVID-19 vaccines offer effective protection against infection for high-risk health care workers Note This plain English summary was reviewed with the support and feedback of the DaC-VaP Patient and Public Involvement Leads. Find out more on: Meet our team This article was published on 2024-09-24
