Low SARS-CoV-2 infection rates and high vaccine-induced immunity among German healthcare workers at the end of the third wave of the COVID-19 pandemic

  1. Thomas Theo Brehm
  2. Michelle Thompson
  3. Felix Ullrich
  4. Dorothee Schwinge
  5. Marylyn M. Addo
  6. Anthea Spier
  7. Johannes K. Knobloch
  8. Martin Aepfelbacher
  9. Ansgar W. Lohse
  10. Marc Lütgehetmann
  11. Julian Schulze zur Wiesch

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Abstract

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  1. Version published to 10.1016/j.ijheh.2021.113851
  2. ScreenIT

    SciScore for 10.1101/2021.08.02.21260667: (What is this?)

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

    Table 1: Rigor

    EthicsConsent: Study design: Participants of our ongoing SARS-CoV-2 seroprevalence study were recruited by informing employees of the University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf and written informed consent was obtained by all study participants before recruitment.
    IRB: The study protocol was reviewed and approved by the Ethics Committee of the Medical Council of Hamburg (PV 7298).
    Sex as a biological variablenot detected.
    Randomizationnot detected.
    Blindingnot detected.
    Power Analysisnot detected.

    Table 2: Resources

    Antibodies
    SentencesResources
    Serology: To differentiate between past infection and vaccine-induced immune response, anti-SARS-CoV-2 antibodies against the viral nucleocapsid (NC) and the receptor-binding domain (RBD) domain of the viral spike protein (S) were determined using the qualitative anti-NC-SARS-CoV-2 Ig assay (Elecsys Anti-SARS-CoV-2, Roche, Mannheim Germany; cut off ≥ 1 COI/ml) and the quantitative anti-S1-RBD-SARS-CoV-2 assay (Elecsys Anti-SARS-CoV-2 Spike, Roche, Mannheim, Germany; cut off 0.8 U/ml).
    anti-NC-SARS-CoV-2
    suggested: None
    Anti-SARS-CoV-2
    suggested: None
    Since it has been previously demonstrated that after natural infection, an anti-S1-RBD-SARS-CoV-2 antibody concentration of more than 133 BAU/ml predicts the presence of neutralizing antibodies (Resman Rus et al., 2021) and may thus be a potential surrogate for high protection from COVID-19 after vaccination, we specifically calculated the percentage of different subgroups of our study cohort with antibody titers above this threshold.
    anti-S1-RBD-SARS-CoV-2
    suggested: None
    Software and Algorithms
    SentencesResources
    Statistical analyses were performed using GraphPad Prism, version 9 for macOS (GraphPad Software, La Jolla, California, USA).
    GraphPad Prism
    suggested: (GraphPad Prism, RRID:SCR_002798)
    GraphPad
    suggested: (GraphPad Prism, RRID:SCR_002798)

    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:
    Our study has important limitations, most of which are inherent to the cross-sectional character of our study. First, we only provide vaccine-induced antibody titers for point in time and are not able to assess longitudinal data or serological kinetics. Also, since different COVID-19 vaccines were licensed and distributed to hospital workers at different points in time, we are not able to compare immune responses elicited by different vaccines at the same post-vaccination interval. Second, while our longitudinal study was initiated before COVID-19 vaccines could be anticipated, and study participants were recruited across all age groups and occupations, we did not recruit a strictly representative sample of hospital employees at our tertiary care center, which limits the overall generalizability of results. Study participants with a positive attitude towards COVID-19 vaccines in general and those who have been vaccinated in particular may be more likely to participate in our study which may represent an important selection bias. Third, not all individuals develop a long-lasting anti-NC-SARS-CoV-2 response follow infection with SARS-CoV-2 (Van Elslande et al., 2021), so we may underestimate the true overall infection rate in our cohort. Fourth, the number of study participants, especially those with anti-NC-SARS-CoV-2 antibodies, was relatively small in some subgroups, and our findings need to be confirmed by larger cohort studies. While the COVID-19 pandemic evolves and the o...

    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

    SciScore is an automated tool that is designed to assist expert reviewers by finding and presenting formulaic information scattered throughout a paper in a standard, easy to digest format. SciScore checks for the presence and correctness of RRIDs (research resource identifiers), and for rigor criteria such as sex and investigator blinding. For details on the theoretical underpinning of rigor criteria and the tools shown here, including references cited, please follow this link.

  3. Version published to 10.1101/2021.08.02.21260667v1 on medRxiv