Protection Across Age Groups of BNT162b2 Vaccine Booster against Covid-19

  1. Yinon M. Bar-On
  2. Yair Goldberg
  3. Micha Mandel
  4. Omri Bodenheimer
  5. Laurence Freedman
  6. Sharon Alroy-Preis
  7. Nachman Ash
  8. Amit Huppert
  9. Ron Milo

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Abstract

BACKGROUND

Following administration to persons 60+ years of age, the booster vaccination campaign in Israel was gradually expanded to younger age groups who received a second dose >5 months earlier. We study the booster effect on COVID-19 outcomes.

METHODS

We extracted data for the period July 30, 2021 to October 6, 2021 from the Israeli Ministry of Health database regarding 4,621,836 persons. We compared confirmed Covid-19 infections, severe illness, and death of those who received a booster ≥12 days earlier (booster group) with a nonbooster group. In a secondary analysis, we compared the rates 3-7 days with ≥12 days after receiving the booster dose. We used Poisson regressions to estimate rate ratios after adjusting for possible confounding factors.

RESULTS

Confirmed infection rates were ≈10-fold lower in the booster versus nonbooster group (ranging 8.8-17.6 across five age groups) and 4.8-11.2 fold lower in the secondary analysis. Severe illness rates in the primary and secondary analysis were 18.7-fold (95% CI, 15.7-22.4) and 6.5-fold (95% CI, 5.1-8.3) lower for ages 60+, and 22.0-fold (95% CI, 10.3-47.0) and 3.2-fold (95% CI, 1.1-9.6) lower for ages 40-60. For ages 60+, COVID-19 associated death rates were 14.7-fold (95% CI, 9.4-23.1) lower in the primary analysis and 4.8-fold (95% CI, 2.8-8.2) lower in the secondary analysis.

CONCLUSIONS

Across all age groups, rates of confirmed infection and severe illness were substantially lower among those who received a booster dose of the BNT162b2 vaccine.

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  1. Rapid Reviews Infectious Diseases

    Jorge Salinas

    Review 2: "Protection Across Age Groups of BNT162b2 Vaccine Booster against Covid-19"

    This paper claims that compared to people who only received two doses of the Pfizer vaccine, those who additionally received the booster dose are less likely to have SARS CoV 2 infection, severe illness, and death. Both reviewers agree on the robustness of the study methods.

  2. Rapid Reviews Infectious Diseases

    Arthur Reingold

    Review 1: "Protection Across Age Groups of BNT162b2 Vaccine Booster against Covid-19"

    This paper claims that compared to people who only received two doses of the Pfizer vaccine, those who additionally received the booster dose are less likely to have SARS CoV 2 infection, severe illness, and death. Both reviewers agree on the robustness of the study methods.

  4. ScreenIT

    SciScore for 10.1101/2021.10.07.21264626: (What is this?)

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

    Table 1: Rigor

    EthicsIRB: For individuals who were abroad in part of the study period, we excluded days at risk and COVID-19 infections during their stay abroad and the 10 days following their return to Israel. OVERSIGHT: The study was approved by the institutional review board of the Sheba Medical Center (Helsinki approval number: SMC-8228-21).
    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: 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 found bar graphs of continuous data. We recommend replacing bar graphs with more informative graphics, as many different datasets can lead to the same bar graph. The actual data may suggest different conclusions from the summary statistics. For more information, please see Weissgerber et al (2015).

    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.

  5. Version published to 10.1101/2021.10.07.21264626v1 on medRxiv