Is Mandatory Vaccination in Population over 60 Adequate to Control the COVID-19 Pandemic in E.U.?

  1. Nikolaos P. Rachaniotis
  2. Thomas K. Dasaklis
  3. Filippos Fotopoulos
  4. Michalis Chouzouris
  5. Vana Sypsa
  6. Antigone Lyberaki
  7. Platon Tinios

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Abstract

Vaccine hesitancy, which potentially leads to the refusal or delayed acceptance of COVID-19 vaccines, is considered a key driver of the increasing death toll from the pandemic in the EU. The European Commission and several member states’ governments are either planning or have already directly or indirectly announced mandatory vaccination for individuals aged over 60, the group which has repeatedly proved to be the most vulnerable. In this paper, an assessment of this strategy’s benefits is attempted by deriving a metric for the potential gains of vaccination mandates that can be used to compare EU member states. This is completed by examining the reduction in Standard Expected Years of Life Lost (SEYLL) per person for the EU population over 60 as a function of the member states’ vaccination percentage in these ages. The publicly available data and results of the second iteration of the SHARE COVID-19 survey on the acceptance of COVID-19 vaccines, conducted during the summer of 2021, are used as inputs.

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  1. Version published to 10.3390/vaccines10020329
  2. Version published to 10.1101/2022.01.25.22269867v2 on medRxiv
  3. ScreenIT

    SciScore for 10.1101/2022.01.25.22269867: (What is this?)

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

    Table 1: Rigor

    Ethicsnot detected.
    Sex as a biological variableThe COVerAGE data was processed and stratified to three 10-year intervals, i.e. 60-69, 70-79 and 80+, separately for females and males, across countries.
    Randomizationnot detected.
    Blindingnot detected.
    Power Analysisnot detected.

    Table 2: Resources

    No key resources detected.

    Results from OddPub: Thank you for sharing your data.

    Results from LimitationRecognizer: We detected the following sentences addressing limitations in the study:
    The study has several limitations. As countries are at different stages of the pandemic trajectory, it is a snapshot of the impacts of COVID-19 on SEYLLp by November 25, 2021. The Delta variant impacts in the examined time span of six months are probably mostly captured, but the advent of the Omicron variant at the end of November 2021 and its effects are not. Moreover, SEYLLp figures may be misestimated. On one hand, COVID-19 deaths may not be accurately recorded in some countries, and most of the evidence suggests that there is an underestimation of the total death toll on the aggregate level. On the other hand, those dying from COVID-19 may be an at-risk population whose remaining life expectancy is shorter than the average person’s due to co-morbidities (Devleesschauwer et al., 2020). Consequently, SEYLLp due to COVID-19 may be overestimated. Nevertheless, the study confirmed the large mortality impact of COVID-19 among the elderly, even using a metric that places greater weight on deaths occurring at younger ages. It also calls for devising policies that protect vulnerable demographics losing the largest number of life-years. Finally, in order to evaluate the effectiveness of mandatory vaccination against COVID-19 for ages over 60, country-specific data must be studied carefully, focusing on the vaccination adherence divergence in E.U..

    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.

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  4. Version published to 10.1101/2022.01.25.22269867v1 on medRxiv