Effectiveness of COVID-19 Vaccines over 13 Months Covering the Period of the Emergence of the Omicron Variant in the Swedish Population.
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Xu Y, Li H, Kirui B, Santosa A, Gisslén M, Leach S, Wettermark B, Vanfleteren LEGW, Nyberg F
Vaccines 10 (12) -
[2022-12-05; online 2022-12-05]
We estimated real-world vaccine effectiveness (VE) against COVID-19 infection, hospitalization, ICU admission, and death up to 13 months after vaccination. VE before and after the emergence of Omicron was investigated. We used registered data from the entire Swedish population above age 12 (n = 9,153,456). Cox regression with time-varying exposure was used to estimate weekly/monthly VE against COVID-19 outcomes from 27 December 2020 to 31 January 2022. The analyses were stratified by age, sex, and vaccine type (BNT162b2, mRNA-1273, and AZD1222). Two vaccine doses offered good long-lasting protection against infection before Omicron (VE were above 85% for all time intervals) but limited protection against Omicron infection (dropped to 43% by week four and no protection by week 14). For severe COVID-19 outcomes, higher VE was observed during the entire follow-up period. Among individuals above age 65, the mRNA vaccines showed better VE against infection than AZD1222 but similar high VE against hospitalization. Our findings provide strong evidence for long-term maintained protection against severe COVID-19 by the basic two-dose schedule, supporting more efforts to encourage unvaccinated persons to get the basic two doses, and encourage vaccinated persons to get a booster to ensure better population-level protection.
Funder: KAW/SciLifeLab National COVID program
Topics: Register-based research
PubMed 36560484
DOI 10.3390/vaccines10122074
Crossref 10.3390/vaccines10122074
pmc: PMC9782222
pii: vaccines10122074