Impacts of rapid mass vaccination against SARS-CoV2 in an early variant of concern hotspot.
prospective_cohort · Level II
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 35105889.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1038/s41467-022-28233-8 and PMC identifier 8807735.
- Licence recorded as CC BY.
- The licence permits redistribution, so the abstract is shown in full and the full text is available from the publisher.
Abstract
We study the real-life effect of an unprecedented rapid mass vaccination campaign. Following a large outbreak of the Beta variant in the district of Schwaz/Austria, 100,000 doses of BNT162b2 (Pfizer/BioNTech) were procured to mass vaccinate the entire adult population of the district between the 11th and 16th of March 2021. This made the district the first widely inoculated region in Europe. We examine the effect of this campaign on the number of infections, cases of variants of concern, hospital and ICU admissions. We compare Schwaz with (i) a control group of highly similar districts, and (ii) with populations residing in municipalities along the border of Schwaz which were just excluded from the campaign. We find large and significant decreases for all outcomes after the campaign. Our results suggest that rapid mass vaccination is an effective tool to curb the spread of SARS-CoV-2.
Medical subject headings
- BNT162 Vaccine
- COVID-19
- SARS-CoV-2