Christopher Labos: Hospitalization Rates Confirm Benefits of COVID Vaccines

Despite what some may say, recent hospitalization figures do not prove that vaccines are not helpful, quite the contrary.

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Over the past few days, I’ve been getting some questions about something in the daily COVID-19 announcements that a lot of people are concerned about. It would appear that the number of vaccinated people who are hospitalized is increasing and that they make up the majority of new hospitalizations these days. This is true, but it doesn’t mean what many people think it means. Many have interpreted this as that vaccines do not work. But that would be a wrong interpretation. They clearly do.

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If you consult the Quebec government newspaper dashboard on the COVID-19 situation, you can get an informative snapshot of where we are in terms of infections, hospitalizations, and vaccinations. On January 10 there were 433 new hospitalizations. Of those people, 117 were not vaccinated, 13 had received one dose, 290 had received two doses, and 13 were too young to be eligible. On the surface, it would seem worrying that so many vaccinated people are ending up in the hospital, and even scandalous that there are more vaccinated than unvaccinated people. But these raw numbers are misleading. They do not take into account two important factors: the size of the vaccinated population and the age of that population.

To explain, let’s imagine we have a hypothetical population of 10,000 people where 90 percent are vaccinated. Now suppose that if you are vaccinated, you are seven times less likely to end up in the hospital than if you are not vaccinated. So for our mathematical experiment, let’s set the hospitalization rate for the unvaccinated population at seven percent and one percent for the vaccinated. Actually, whatever number you choose will lead to the same conclusion as long as you keep the ratio 7: 1, which is actually very close to the real number.

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So if we imagine that COVID-19 infects everyone in our sample population, then one percent of our 9,000 vaccinated people will end up in the hospital. That is, 90 vaccinated people end up in the hospital after becoming infected with COVID-19 in our theoretical population. Now, among the 1,000 unvaccinated people, if seven percent end up in the hospital, that translates to 70 hospitalized unvaccinated people.

Just looking at hospitalizations, it appears that the 90 vaccinated patients outnumber the 70 unvaccinated. They do. But the risk of being hospitalized has not changed. You are still seven times more likely to be hospitalized if you are not vaccinated.

One factor that I have omitted in the above calculations is the effect of age. Because vaccination rates are lower in younger age groups compared to older ones, and because younger individuals are less likely to require hospitalization compared to older ones, you also need to adjust for age to have an accurate idea of ​​the difference in hospitalization rates and protection benefits. of vaccinations Once this is done, the data confirm that unvaccinated people are 7.1 times more likely to be hospitalized than vaccinated people and 13.8 times more likely to be in intensive care.

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Many people are understandably disappointed that vaccines did not end the pandemic, as many expected. Unfortunately, the Omicron variant is infectious enough and different enough from previous strains that it can still infect people who have received two doses of the vaccine.

However, it would be a mistake to say that vaccines have failed us. Vaccination, especially after a booster, provides very good protection against serious infection and hospitalization. Despite what some people may tell you, recent hospitalization figures don’t prove vaccines aren’t helpful. In fact, they confirm your benefit. If there were no vaccines available, we would not be talking about thousands of people in the hospital, but potentially tens of thousands who would need hospitalization and an overwhelmed health care system where people would not be able to get the care they need. The situation would undoubtedly be worse.

Christopher Labos is a Montreal physician and co-host of the Body of Evidence podcast.

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Reference-montrealgazette.com

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