Updated COVID shot led to less severe illness, fewer hospitalizations last year, US study finds
By Nancy Lapid
(Reuters) – Last year’s updated COVID-19 vaccines helped prevent serious outcomes, including hospitalization and deaths, according to data from a large study of U.S. veterans published on Wednesday.
Vaccinated veterans who developed Covid after taking the 2024-2025 supplements from Moderna or Pfizer/BioNTech were also less likely to go to the emergency room for complications compared to unvaccinated Covid patients, researchers report in The New England Journal of Medicine.
Researchers simultaneously tracked 164,132 veterans who received the Covid vaccine and flu vaccine in 2024-2025 and 131,839 veterans who received only the flu vaccine.
The vast majority of participants were at least 45 years old, and nearly all of those who received the COVID vaccine received U.S. Surgeon General Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who questioned their safety and effectiveness, contrary to scientific evidence. received one of two approved mRNA-based vaccines that are being re-examined by .
SIGNIFICANT CLINICAL BENEFIT
Dr. from Georgetown Medical Center in Washington, DC, who was not involved in the research. “Vaccines still provide imperfect additional protection against significant outcomes, including hospitalization and death, but such serious outcomes are generally much less common than early in the pandemic,” Jesse Goodman said.
Over six months, veterans who received COVID and flu vaccines experienced a 29% reduction in emergency room visits, a 39% reduction in hospitalizations, and a 64% reduction in deaths, compared to those who received the flu vaccine alone.
This pattern was similar regardless of age or the presence of major chronic medical conditions.
In absolute terms, the additional effect of the COVID vaccine was small, at least in part because the versions of the virus circulating at the time caused milder disease and because previous infections and vaccines led to greater immunity, the researchers said.
Vaccination is estimated to result in 18.3 fewer emergency room visits, 7.5 fewer hospitalizations and 2.2 fewer deaths per 10,000 patients.
NEJM editor-in-chief Dr. Eric Rubin said the extra protection the vaccine provides is much less than it used to be, as rates of severe illness and death from COVID have dropped significantly over time.
“Given what we know about the risk of vaccination in this (middle-aged and older) population, which is extremely low, these data suggest that vaccination remains an attractive option, at least at the point of the study,” Rubin said.
Goodman, the former chief scientist of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, said all recent observational studies, including this one, “support vaccines that still have meaningful efficacy on important outcomes.”
Researchers found that the vaccine’s effectiveness decreased modestly during the six-month study.
They noted that the research was not a randomized trial and therefore could not prove that Covid vaccines prevent more serious outcomes.
(Reporting by Nancy Lapid; Editing by Bill Berkrot)
