COVID-19 vaccines seem to dramatically lower hospitalization risk after just one dose, according to data from the UK

Marianne Guenot
Scotland Vaccine Inverness COVID coronavirus
A paramedic administering a coronavirus vaccine near Inverness, Scotland, on February 11. Andrew Milligan/PA Images via Getty Images

  • A study in Scotland found that people's risk of hospitalization fell steeply after just one COVID-19 shot.

  • Figures from Scotland show the shot led to people being on average 84% less likely to be hospitalized.

  • The news is the latest in a series of promising updates on the real-world effectiveness of vaccines.

  • Visit the Business section of Insider for more stories.

Both COVID-19 vaccines authorized for use in the UK were found to substantially reduce hospitalizations from the coronavirus after just a single jab, according to new data out of Scotland.

The figures, published early Monday, are the first to measure the rate of hospitalization from a real-world vaccine rollout.

It is the latest in a series of promising updates from countries that have vaccinated significant proportions of their populations.

Monday's data analyzed the health records of 5.4 million people - nearly Scotland's entire population - from December 8 to February 15.

Of those, more than 1.1 million received one dose of either the vaccine developed by Pfizer and BioNTech or the one developed by AstraZeneca and Oxford University.

The scientists found that those who received a vaccine were significantly less likely to be hospitalized than those who hadn't.

Looking at the protection overall, the study estimated that hospitalization risk from COVID-19 fell by 84% four weeks after receiving either jab.

The UK decided to prioritize giving as many people as possible a single jab, even though the manufacturers recommend two for the fullest protection. As a result, relatively few in the UK have had a second dose.

Breaking down the data, one dose of the Pfizer vaccine cut hospitalizations by 85% four weeks after the first jab, and the AstraZeneca vaccine cut hospitalizations up to 94%.

The scientists also measured the effect of the vaccine every week after receiving the first dose. They found the vaccine had the strongest effect in the fourth week after inoculation.

Vaccine effect was highest on those aged 18-64. However, in that age bracket, only those who have been defined as clinically vulnerable would have received the vaccine.

Among those aged over 80 years, who are at the highest risk from COVID-19, the vaccine gave 81% reduction in hospitalization after four weeks.

This study was published as a pre-print, the next step will be for it to be reviewed by peers.

This is the first study looking at the effect of a vaccine on hospitalization for an entire nation, the scientists said.

Real-world data from Israel's rapid vaccine campaign has previously shown that the Pfizer vaccine cuts 94% of symptomatic cases after two doses of the vaccine, a separate measure of effectiveness.

Lead scientist Aziz Sheik from the University of Edinburgh, said that this evidence "given us great reasons to be optimistic for the future."

Read the original article on Business Insider

Recommended Stories

  • The coronavirus variant found in South Africa has been detected in a New York resident for the first time. 10 states have reported cases so far.

    After the variant found in South Africa was detected, Gov. Cuomo said precautions to stop the spread of the virus were now "more important than ever."

  • States are lifting COVID-19 mask mandates, but with the pace of vaccinations and spread of variants, experts say it's too soon

    While experts told Insider some restrictions could be eased as case numbers decrease, they agreed masks should be the last to go.

  • Kids 10 to 14 are 8 times more likely to have poor heart health if moms had heart issues while pregnant

    If a woman has heart health factors, such as obesity and smoking while pregnant, her child might end up a decade later with poor heart health, according to a new study from Northwestern Medicine and the Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago. The study, published Tuesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association, is the most comprehensive yet to connect multiple heart ...

  • The COVID-19 vaccines are proving incredibly effective. Here's why experts are downplaying the success.

    Another study released Monday underscored the remarkable effectiveness of the COVID-19 vaccines. Public health experts in Scotland examined data on all 5.4 million residents of Scotland, including the million-plus who had received the first dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech or Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine, and found that getting the first dose reduced the risk of hospitalization by up to 85 percent and 94 percent, respectively, after four weeks — even as a new, more transmissible variant became dominant. The Scottish study has not yet been peer-reviewed, but it matches findings from Israel and elsewhere that in the real world, the COVID-19 vaccines are proving incredibly good at preventing serious infections, hospitalization, and death, apparently even transmission. Still, the message a lot of people hear about the vaccines, David Leonhardt argues in The New York Times, is that "the coronavirus vaccines aren't 100 percent effective. Vaccinated people may still be contagious. And the virus variants may make everything worse. ... The vaccine is not a get-out-of-COVID-free card!" That type of "vaccine alarmism" is grounded in technical truths but "fundamentally misleading," Leonhardt writes, and it's feeding the sizable share of Americans who say they would turn down a vaccine "partly because it sounds so ineffectual." So what's getting lost in translation? "Many academic experts — and, yes, journalists too — are instinctively skeptical and cautious," Leonhardt says. In their own lives, "many are getting shots as soon as they're offered one. They are urging their family and friends to do the same. But when they speak to a national audience, they deliver a message that comes off very differently. It is dominated by talk of risks, uncertainties, caveats, and possible problems." Dr. Anthony Fauci, the top U.S. infectious disease expert, said on CNN Sunday that "we will be approaching a degree of normality" in the fall, but the headlines note he also said it's "possible" people may still have to wear face masks in 2022. Public health experts do genuinely disagree about where we are in the pandemic and what lies ahead. But when it comes to the vaccines, there's broad agreement. All seven vaccines that have undergone large trials "appear to be 100 percent effective for serious complications," a group of prominent public health experts wrote in a USA Today op-ed last week. "The best thing you can do is get vaccinated as soon as you're able with whichever vaccine is available to you first." More stories from theweek.com5 outrageously funny cartoons about Ted Cruz's Cancun getawayResign, Andrew CuomoThe boom in 'green' energy

  • COVID Would Kill Me. Too Bad I Live in a Vaccine Hellhole.

    Photo Illustration by The Daily Beast/Photos GettyThe COVID-19 vaccine is wracking me.My ears ring from elevated blood pressure, and my breathing is hampered. But these aren’t side effects. We know the vaccines are safe and effective.It’s frustration—and some vertigo.I’m as high-risk as virtually anyone but not—at least so far as I can tell with any clarity—allowed a shot yet. Not in Alabama anyway, where about half a million people have had it before me.A Third of U.S. Servicemembers Refuse to Be Vaccinated: PentagonIt feels virtually guaranteed a case of COVID-19 would kill me. I’m middle aged—in my 50s—but was diagnosed with genetic emphysema in my late 30s. A missing chemical component called Alpha-1 antitrypsin allowed my immune system to gradually destroy my lungs’ elasticity. My breathing capacity is under a fifth of what it should be for someone my age.I went from an active life—commuting by bicycle, hiking, and running with my dog—to struggling for breath in just a few years’ time. It’s why I quit working in the smoke and heat of restaurant kitchens and turned to writing for a living.It’s also why I sleep and exercise with a stream of oxygen flowing into my nose—why even a head cold or hay fever causes bronchitis, then pneumonia. It’s led to more than half a dozen hospitalizations in the last 16 years.My first hospital stay cost $8,000 for four days, all from missing a pharmaceutical dose. I’ve since qualified for disability and the attendant Medicare coverage; otherwise I wouldn’t have insurance at all, or access to the nearly $250,000 of medicines I need to stay alive each year.When a “strange new pneumonia” emerged over a year ago, it obviously caught my attention. By March 2020, COVID-19 was oozing across the United States, and my doctors told me to quarantine at home and take all safety measures.Vaccine breakthroughs have come amazingly quickly, and Alabama’s phased rollout started in December, going to frontline workers and group home residents first. Understandable and fair.Last month, some facilities moved to phase 1b—those over 75 years old, first responders, essential workers dealing with the public. Interested parties were directed to websites or phone numbers for registration.Around this time came a social-media parade as younger, healthier faces proclaimed their vaccinations. Every other day, my wife would seethe.“How did they get this? Why can’t you get that?” she shouted.We discovered some lawyers were eligible—or at least we heard they were getting shots. There are 18,000 members of the Alabama Bar Association, two-thirds male, about 90 percent white. Librarians, publicists, city hall employees, and others were vaccinated, too.As for me, some websites had no specific listing of media personnel (my profession) or pre-existing conditions for eligibility. I registered anyway, but never heard back.Rumors circulated of facilities intermittently opened to first-come, first-served and no restrictions. I never received notification.Conditions tightened. One clinic’s website closed. Another announced critical shortages. A phone number for another only gave an “out of vaccine” message.This shoddy scenario ruled the state. As the Wall Street Journal recently reported, we were last in the nation in vaccinations, with only 10,013 per 100,000 residents. All while we had one of the highest rates for positive coronavirus tests at 29 percent in recent weeks, per Johns Hopkins University.The causes are obvious: Alabama is largely poor, rural, and unhealthy. When the state rejected Medicaid expansion for Obamacare, it stressed an overburdened public health system that has seen rural healthcare access evaporate. In February 2020, one quarter of Alabama hospitals risked closure.Latent paranoia engendered by historic racism and horrific experimentation on Black populations makes some here understandably—if unfortunately—leery of inoculations. Black folks comprise 27 percent of the Alabama population—the state’s most impoverished rural counties are majority-Black—but just 11 percent of the vaccinated are Black, by one recent estimate.The broader politicization of COVID-19 and paranoid beliefs also play a role. It’s why just a quarter of Mobile, Alabama’s police force had been vaccinated as of earlier this month. Add to this the jumbled communications I encountered, and the results become inevitable.The Vaccines Are More Effective Than You Think, Even With Those Variants LoomingSome of those police officers worked Mobile’s massive Mardi Gras street party last Tuesday, a potential superspreader event presided over by Mobile Mayor Sandy Stimpson after the state legislature passed a bill protecting businesses and governments from COVID-19 lawsuits. Attendance expected to be in the thousands was dampened by cold temperatures and warnings from public health officials. It could prove a savior.State Health Officer Dr. Scott Harris admitted vaccine supplies are low and, when paired with the aforementioned factors, it’s a headache. He said the Biden administration has straightened snarls, but it’s not enough.“We’re not a healthy state to begin with. We have a lot of diabetes and heart disease and other things that predispose people to bad health problems,” Harris recently told reporters. “Adding that chronic disease category might add two million people to the list. It’s not helpful to say every person’s eligible immediately when there’s no vaccine to give them.”Despite Harris’ statement, mixed signals are still on the streets. A restaurant worker told me he arrived at Mobile’s largest clinic on Feb. 13 and—without being asked for ID “or anything”—got a shot. His diabetic wife got the needle, too, he said.Walmart announced its vaccine distribution earlier this month. On its website, I called myself an essential worker—as media personnel—rather than a high-risk individual. Ironically, if I wear portable oxygen, then my wife can piggyback as “living with a high-risk individual,” though it appears the “high risk” patient would still be in a later vaccine group.I don’t know the source of all these gaps in protocol, between official schedules and what is happening. We’re tired of worrying about it. We tried to play strictly by the rules, but we’re tired of playing with my life.Three days before our scheduled vaccination appointments, I awoke with my first-ever bout of vertigo. The inner-ear disturbance had me reeling and retching enough to preclude my vaccination, since it would now be impossible to differentiate vertigo from possible inoculation side effects.A visit with a medical specialist will take precedence over the vaccination—assuming I’d have been able to get it at all. The week until then will be fraught with questions about COVID-19’s local spread. Was Mardi Gras enough to fill the specialist’s office with the deadly virus? Will I roll into the waiting room seeking relief only to find my doom?The only certainty is that if I find relief from the vertigo specialist that day, we’re going straight to Mobile’s largest vaccine clinic, where stories continue to emerge about ignored priorities, appointments, and protocols.Our patience and choices are exhausted, and I need that shot.Read more at The Daily Beast.Got a tip? Send it to The Daily Beast hereGet our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.

  • Kids represent a small fraction of overall COVID-19 deaths in the US but 75% of them are children of color

    Kids of color died at a higher rater than adults of color, who are more than twice as likely to die from the coronavirus compared to white adults.

  • Young, healthy teacher contracted COVID and almost died after major heart attack

    Donald Bravo was startled awake early one morning the week before Christmas by what sounded like a rock being thrown against the window.

  • Some unemployed Californians say they are fraud victims but bank won't unfreeze their accounts

    California's state unemployment agency is still struggling to deal with a crush of claims during the pandemic - and a staggering amount of fraud. But many unemployed Californians with legitimate claims of fraud tell CBS News they question whether the bank that supplies the debit cards which hold the unemployment funds is really investigating. Anna Werner reports.

  • Biden news - live: Trump to signal he’s ‘presumptive 2024 nominee’ as president to mark 500,000 Covid deaths

    Follow for all the latest news from the White House and beyond in US politics

  • Over 43 million doses of Sinopharm's COVID-19 vaccines used globally: state media

    More than 43 million COVID-19 vaccine doses from China's state-backed China National Pharmaceutical Group (Sinopharm) have been used, including over 34 million administered in the country and the rest overseas, official media said on Sunday. China National Biotec Group Company (CNBG), a Sinopharm unit, has two COVID-19 vaccines.

  • As US death toll nears 500K, Dr. Anthony Fauci says Americans could be wearing masks in 2022: Latest COVID-19 updates

    Dr. Anthony Fauci says it's "possible" we will be wearing masks into 2022. A Johns Hopkins expert disagrees. Latest COVID-19 news.

  • A data error reduced a healthy 30-year-old man to the size of a thumb, qualifying him for a COVID-19 vaccination

    A computer glitch shrank Liam Thorp, from Liverpool, from 6 foot 2 inches tall to 6.2cm (2.4 inches).

  • Bitcoin drops after weekend climb to all-time high

    Bitcoin fell on Monday after surging to its latest record high a day earlier as a sell-off in global equities curbed risk appetite, with some investors also citing concerns about the rapid surge in the virtual currency's price. Traders also pointed to the unwinding of highly leveraged long positions in the cryptocurrency. The most popular cryptocurrency fell to $47,400, a one-week low.

  • India sees new lockdowns as coronavirus cases rise again

    Cases of COVID-19 are increasing in some parts of India after months of a steady nationwide decline, prompting authorities to impose lockdowns and other virus restrictions. Infections have been plummeting in India since September, and life has already returned to normal in large parts of the country. Public health officials are now investigating potential mutations in the virus that could make it more contagious and render some treatments and vaccines less effective.

  • Vietnam was ranked 2nd for successfully handling the coronavirus pandemic, and its contact tracing was so good it barely had to lock down

    The Lowy Institute ranked Vietnam No. 2 behind New Zealand in successfully handling the pandemic. The US ranked 94.

  • COVID vaccine reducing risk of hospitalisations, Scottish study suggests

    Scotland's vaccination drive appears to be markedly reducing the risk of hospitalisation for COVID-19, suggesting that both the Pfizer-BioNtech and Oxford-AstraZeneca shots are highly effective in preventing severe infections, preliminary study findings showed on Monday. Results of the study, which covered the entire Scottish population of 5.4 million people, showed that by the fourth week after the initial dose, the Pfizer and AstraZeneca vaccines were found to reduce the risk of hospitalisation by up to 85% and 94% respectively. "These results are very encouraging and have given us great reasons to be optimistic for the future," said Aziz Sheikh, a professor at the University of Edinburgh’s Usher Institute who co-led the study.

  • People Who Have Had COVID Should Get Single Vaccine Dose, Studies Suggest

    Nearly 30 million people in the United States — and probably many others whose illnesses were never diagnosed — have been infected with the coronavirus so far. Should these people still be vaccinated? Two new studies answer that question with an emphatic yes. In fact, the research suggests that for these people, just one dose of the vaccine is enough to turbocharge their antibodies and destroy the coronavirus — and even some more infectious variants. Sign up for The Morning newsletter from the New York Times The results of these new studies are consistent with the findings of two others published over the past few weeks. Taken together, the research suggests that people who have had COVID-19 should be immunized — but a single dose of the vaccine may be enough. “I think it’s a really strong rationale for why people who were previously infected with COVID should be getting the vaccine,” said Jennifer Gommerman, an immunologist at the University of Toronto who was not involved in the new research. A person’s immune response to a natural infection is highly variable. Most people make copious amounts of antibodies that persist for many months. But some people who had mild symptoms or no symptoms of COVID-19 produce few antibodies, which quickly fall to undetectable levels. The vaccines “even the playing field,” Gommerman said, so that anyone who has recovered from COVID-19 produces enough antibodies to protect against the virus. The latest study, which has not yet been published in a scientific journal, analyzed blood samples from people who have had COVID-19. The findings suggested that their immune systems would have trouble fending off B1351, the coronavirus variant first identified in South Africa. But one shot of either the Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna vaccine significantly changed the picture: It amplified the amount of antibodies in their blood by a thousandfold — “a massive, massive boost,” said Andrew T. McGuire, an immunologist at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, who led the study. Flush with antibodies, samples from all of the participants could neutralize not only B1351 but also the coronavirus that caused the severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS, epidemic in 2003. In fact, the antibodies seemed to perform better than those in people who had not had COVID and had received two doses of a vaccine. Multiple studies have suggested that the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines are about five times less effective against the variant. The researchers obtained blood samples from 10 volunteers in the Seattle COVID Cohort Study who were vaccinated months after contracting the coronavirus. Seven of the participants received the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, and three received the Moderna vaccine. Blood taken about two to three weeks after vaccination showed a significant jump in the amounts of antibodies compared with the samples collected before vaccination. The researchers do not yet know how long the increased amount of antibodies will persist, but “hopefully, they’ll last a long time,” McGuire said. The researchers also saw increases in immune cells that remember and fight the virus, McGuire said. “It looks pretty clear that we’re boosting their preexisting immunity,” he said. In another new study, researchers at New York University found that a second dose of the vaccine did not add much benefit at all for people who have had COVID-19 — a phenomenon that has also been observed with vaccines for other viruses. In that study, most people had been infected with the coronavirus eight or nine months earlier but saw their antibodies increase by a hundredfold to a thousandfold when given the first dose of a vaccine. After the second dose, however, the antibody levels did not increase any further. “It’s a real testament to the strength of the immunologic memory that they get a single dose and have a huge increase,” said Dr. Mark J. Mulligan, director of the NYU Langone Vaccine Center and the study’s lead author. In some parts of the world, including the United States, a significant minority of the population has already been infected, Mulligan noted. “They definitely should be vaccinated,” he said. It is unclear whether the thousandfold spike in antibody levels recorded in the lab will occur in real-life settings. Still, the research shows that a single shot is enough to increase the levels of antibodies significantly, said Florian Krammer, an immunologist at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York. Krammer led another of the new studies, which showed that people who have had COVID-19 and received one dose of a vaccine experienced more severe side effects from the inoculation and had more antibodies compared with those who had not been infected before. “If you put all four papers together, that’s providing pretty good information about people who already had an infection only needing one vaccination,” Krammer said. He and other researchers are trying to persuade scientists at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to recommend only one dose for those who have recovered from COVID-19. Ideally, those people should be monitored after the first shot in case their antibody levels plummet after some weeks or months, said Dennis R. Burton, an immunologist at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California. The fact that the supercharged antibodies observed in the new study can fight the 2003 SARS virus suggests that a single dose of the vaccine may have prompted the volunteers’ bodies to produce “broadly neutralizing antibodies” — immune molecules capable of attacking a broad range of related viruses, Burton said. He and other scientists have for decades investigated whether broadly neutralizing antibodies can tackle multiple versions of HIV at once. HIV mutates faster than any other virus and quickly evades most antibodies. The new coronavirus mutates much more slowly, but there are now multiple variants of the virus that seem to have evolved to be more contagious or to thwart the immune system. The new study may provide clues on how to make a single vaccine that stimulates the production of broadly neutralizing antibodies that can destroy all variants of the coronavirus, Burton said. Without such a vaccine, scientists will need to tweak the vaccines every time the virus changes significantly. “You’re stuck in a kind of Whac-a-Mole approach,” he said. It will probably take many months if not longer to develop and test that sort of vaccine against the coronavirus, but “that’s the longer-term way to approach this virus.” This article originally appeared in The New York Times. © 2021 The New York Times Company

  • Bomb squad called to defuse bag of kittens left outside church in Ohio

    ‘They didn’t hear ticking, they heard purring’

  • Scotland vaccinations lead to sharp drop in hospitalizations

    Scotland’s COVID-19 vaccination program has led to a sharp drop in hospitalizations, researchers said Monday, boosting hopes that the shots will work as well in the real world as they have in carefully controlled studies. The Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine reduced hospital admissions by up to 94% four weeks after people received their first dose, while the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine cut admissions by up to 85%, according to scientists at the University of Edinburgh, the University of Strathclyde and Public Health Scotland. The data was gathered between Dec. 8 and Feb. 15, a period when 21% of Scotland’s population received their first vaccine shot.

  • I flew on the 2 largest US airlines in 2021 and couldn't believe how much better Delta was handling the pandemic over American

    American Airlines and Delta Air Lines have different opinions about health and safety, with one choosing to block seats and the other filling planes.