Coronavirus Disease 2019 Vaccine Impact on Rates of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 Cases and Postvaccination Strain Sequences Among Health Care Workers at an Urban Academic Medical Center: A Prospective Cohort Study
This article has been Reviewed by the following groups
Listed in
- Evaluated articles (ScreenIT)
Abstract
Background
Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) vaccine trials and post-implementation data suggest that vaccination decreases infections. We examine vaccination’s impact on severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) case rates and viral diversity among health care workers (HCWs) during a high community prevalence period.
Methods
In this prospective cohort study, HCW received 2 doses of BNT162b2 or mRNA-1273. We included confirmed cases among HCWs from 9 December 2020 to 23 February 2021. Weekly SARS-CoV-2 rates per 100,000 person-days and by time from first injection (1–14 and ≥15 days) were compared with surrounding community rates. Viral genomes were sequenced.
Results
SARS-CoV-2 cases occurred in 1.4% (96/7109) of HCWs given at least a first dose and 0.3% (17/5913) of HCWs given both vaccine doses. Adjusted rate ratios (95% confidence intervals) were 0.73 (.53–1.00) 1–14 days and 0.18 (.10–.32) ≥15 days from first dose. HCW ≥15 days from initial dose compared to 1-14 days were more often older (46 vs 38 years, P = .007), Latinx (10% vs 8%, P = .03), and asymptomatic (48% vs 11%, P = .0002). SARS-CoV-2 rates among HCWs fell below the surrounding community, an 18% vs 11% weekly decrease, respectively (P = .14). Comparison of 50 genomes from post–first dose cases did not indicate selection pressure toward known spike antibody escape mutations.
Conclusions
Our results indicate an early positive impact of vaccines on SARS-CoV-2 case rates. Post-vaccination isolates did not show unusual genetic diversity or selection for mutations of concern.
Article activity feed
-
-
-
SciScore for 10.1101/2021.03.30.21254655: (What is this?)
Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.
Table 1: Rigor
Institutional Review Board Statement IRB: Boston University Medical Campus’ institutional review board approved the study. Randomization not detected. Blinding not detected. Power Analysis not detected. Sex as a biological variable not detected. Table 2: Resources
Software and Algorithms Sentences Resources Nucleotide substitutions, insertions, and deletions were identified with LoFreq [8] following alignment to the Wuhan Hu-1 reference sequence (NC_045512.2) [9] with Bowtie2 [10]. LoFreqsuggested: (LoFreq, RRID:SCR_013054)Bowtie2suggested: (Bowtie 2, RRID:SCR_016368)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 …
SciScore for 10.1101/2021.03.30.21254655: (What is this?)
Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.
Table 1: Rigor
Institutional Review Board Statement IRB: Boston University Medical Campus’ institutional review board approved the study. Randomization not detected. Blinding not detected. Power Analysis not detected. Sex as a biological variable not detected. Table 2: Resources
Software and Algorithms Sentences Resources Nucleotide substitutions, insertions, and deletions were identified with LoFreq [8] following alignment to the Wuhan Hu-1 reference sequence (NC_045512.2) [9] with Bowtie2 [10]. LoFreqsuggested: (LoFreq, RRID:SCR_013054)Bowtie2suggested: (Bowtie 2, RRID:SCR_016368)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: An explicit section about the limitations of the techniques employed in this study was not found. We encourage authors to address study limitations.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.
-