UK-wide study reveals harm caused by people not getting COVID vaccines

More than 7,000 people were hospitalized or died from COVID-19 in the UK during the summer of 2022 because they did not receive the recommended number of vaccine doses, according to a study published on Tuesday which was the first to cover the entire British population.

Researchers said the ‘landmark’ population-wide study showed how important it is for people to continue to receive booster shots as COVID continues to pose a major health threat .

More than 90 percent of the UK’s adult population was vaccinated at the start of the pandemic.

However, between June and September 2022, after the emergency phase of the pandemic was declared over and attention had turned elsewhere, around 44% of Britons were undervaccinated, the researchers said.

Using individual health data from the National Health Service (NHS) as well as modeling, the researchers estimated that there would have been 7,180 fewer hospitalizations or deaths if everyone had been up to date with their vaccinations.

This means almost 20 per cent of the 40,000 COVID hospitalizations or deaths over the summer could have been avoided if Britons had been fully vaccinated.

Cathie Sudlow, chief scientist at Health Data Research UK who led the research, told a news conference that the results clearly showed that “being fully and correctly vaccinated is good for individuals and for the whole of the society”.

Take the pulse of a nation

The research, published in The Lancet journal, used secure, anonymised health data from everyone aged over five in the four UK countries.

The researchers said it was the first time such a study had included all 67 million people in Britain.

They called for the same approach to be deployed in other areas of health research, such as cancer, diabetes and heart disease.

“We think this landmark study really lays out a line in the sand to say that this sort of thing is possible: we need to do more of it,” said co-author Angela Wood from the University of Cambridge.

The UK is particularly well placed to conduct such population-wide research because “virtually every interaction” with the NHS is recorded, said co-author Aziz Sheikh of the University of Edinburgh.

“There is nowhere else in the world that can do this,” he added.

Undervaccinated people tend to be male, younger, non-white, from a more disadvantaged background and with fewer health problems, the study found.

The recommended number of COVID vaccine doses has evolved over time and varies by country. The UK’s recommendation in June 2022 was one shot for people aged 5 to 11, two for 12 to 15 year olds, three for 16 to 74 year olds and four for people over 75.

Last week, the World Health Organization warned that COVID transmission increased in December, fueled by gatherings over the Christmas holiday. The JN.1 variant is now the most frequently reported worldwide.

© 2024 AFP