Coverage and Estimated Effectiveness of mRNA COVID-19 Vaccines Among US Veterans

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Abstract

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  1. SciScore for 10.1101/2021.06.14.21258906: (What is this?)

    Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.

    Table 1: Rigor

    EthicsIRB: The study protocol was approved by the institutional review board of the VA Medical Center in White River Junction, VT.
    Sex as a biological variablenot detected.
    Randomizationnot detected.
    Blindingnot detected.
    Power Analysisnot detected.

    Table 2: Resources

    No key resources detected.


    Results from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).


    Results from LimitationRecognizer: We detected the following sentences addressing limitations in the study:
    Limitations: A main concern regarding test-negative studies is misclassification. Our study relied on records of vaccination collected prospectively and in near real-time rather than subjects’ recall. While this study demonstrated vaccine-coverage reached all demographic subgroups, the vaccine coverage reported here may be a conservative estimate(9), given that the vaccination of individuals by State and local health departments might have not been reported to the VHA. Moreover, by the end of 2020, VHA had standardized its testing and case definitions, unlike the beginning of the pandemic(21). We used SARS-CoV-2–positive test results coupled with clinical syndrome in a sensitivity analysis to reduce potential misclassification and found that VE matched that of the main analysis at 91% (95%CI 87, 93) (Supplemental Table 3). Some Veterans could have received vaccination through the VHA but were hospitalized in a non-VHA facility, especially in rural communities (22). We limited the study population to those who routinely sought care at VHA facilities to minimize the likelihood of including patients who were vaccinated or sought treatment for COVID-19 elsewhere. To further address this, we utilized available Medicare data and repeated the analysis including any records of vaccination and hospitalization outside the VHA for these patients. The results were similar with a VE of 87% (95% CI 83, 89) (Supplemental Table 4). Nevertheless, there could still be residual misclassificatio...

    Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.


    Results from Barzooka: We did not find any issues relating to the usage of bar graphs.


    Results from JetFighter: We did not find any issues relating to colormaps.


    Results from rtransparent:
    • Thank you for including a conflict of interest statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • Thank you for including a funding statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • No protocol registration statement was detected.

    Results from scite Reference Check: We found no unreliable references.


    About SciScore

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