Estimating the early impact of vaccination against COVID-19 on deaths among elderly people in Brazil: Analyses of routinely-collected data on vaccine coverage and mortality

  1. Cesar G. Victora
  2. Marcia C. Castro
  3. Susie Gurzenda
  4. Arnaldo C. Medeiros
  5. Giovanny V.A. França
  6. Aluisio J.D. Barros

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Abstract

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  1. Version published to 10.1016/j.eclinm.2021.101036
  2. ScreenIT

    SciScore for 10.1101/2021.04.27.21256187: (What is this?)

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

    Table 1: Rigor

    Ethicsnot detected.
    Sex as a biological variablenot detected.
    Randomizationnot detected.
    Blindingnot detected.
    Power Analysisnot detected.

    Table 2: Resources

    Software and Algorithms
    SentencesResources
    Analyses were carried out using Stata version 16 (StataCorp, College Station, TX, USA).
    StataCorp
    suggested: (Stata, RRID:SCR_012763)

    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:
    We now describe how we handled potential caveats in these analyses. First, the absolute number of deaths in the elderly may be reduced due to smaller number of persons at risk, resulting from high mortality in 2020 due to COVID-19 and other causes. In an estimated population of approximately 815 thousand Brazilians aged 90+ years in 2020, there were approximately 144 thousand deaths in the calendar year, of which about 10% were reported as being caused by COVID-19. To address this potential caveat, our calculations of mortality rates for 2021 were based on population estimates at the beginning of the year from which all-cause deaths had already been deducted. Second, proportionate mortality may be spuriously reduced among the elderly if the P.1 variant of concern disproportionally affected younger individuals, either in terms of infection rates or of infection-fatality rates. The EPICOVID-19 study has been monitoring prevalence of antibodies against SARS-CoV-2 through household surveys in nine large cities in the state of Rio Grande do Sul since April 2020. In early February 2021, antibody prevalence levels were 9.6%, 11.3%, 10.0% and 8.3% for unvaccinated individuals aged 10-19, 20-39, 40-59, and 60+ years, respectively (AJD Barros, personal communication). The state has been strongly affected by the recent pandemic wave, yet there is no evidence of important age patterns in antibody prevalence. Thirdly, our results based on ratios of mortality rates closely mirror the findi...

    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.
    • Thank you for including a protocol registration statement.

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

    About SciScore

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  3. Version published to 10.1101/2021.04.27.21256187 on medRxiv