Vaccines cut link between cases and hospital admissions

VACCINES are cutting Covid admissions by three quarters and breaking the link between cases and hospitalisations, research suggests, as the head of the NHS said the rollout was keeping people out of hospital.

New analysis by the University of Manchester and NHS England found there has been a 75 per cent reduction in Covid emergency hospitalisations in vaccinated 80 to 83-year-olds.

Of those vaccinated people who did develop an infection, fewer needed to go to hospital, the study showed.

Sir Simon Stevens, the NHS chief executive, said: “Vaccines are successfully reducing hospitalisations and deaths among the cohorts that have had the vaccine. Data show a 75 per cent reduction in emergency Covid hospitalisations for the vaccination cohorts and, as more and more people are vaccinated, that effect will widen.”

His comments to the Health Service Journal come after Boris Johnson said it was “very, very important” for people to realise “that the reduction in hospitalisations and in deaths and in infections has not been achieved by the vaccination programme”.

Yesterday, Tim Spector of King’s College London, the lead scientist on the ZOE Covid Symptom Study app, said he was “quite surprised” by the Prime Minister’s comments, accusing him of “living in a slightly different world”.

Prof Spector said there was “absolutely no doubt in my mind” that the drop in rates was largely due to vaccination, adding that people were 20-fold less likely to be infected after the jab.

The Department of Health has already stated that the vaccine has had a “significant impact” on reducing hospitalisations and deaths, with more than 10,000 lives saved between December and March. Last week, researchers at Imperial College found that the rate of infection fell in all age groups and regions across those two months, with figures also indicating the vaccine rollout could be breaking the link between infections, deaths and hospitalisations.

Boris Johnson raised eyebrows on Tuesday after suggesting that the reduction in hospitalisations, deaths and infections had not been achieved by the vaccination rollout. Thankfully, less than 24 hours later, science had proved he was wrong.

Research from NHS England and the University of Manchester showed the stark difference in cases, admissions and deaths for elderly people who had been vaccinated compared with those who had not. It was a large study, involving more than 170,000 people, and researchers had scrupulously case-matched participants to make sure the results were not skewed by underlying conditions, sex or geographical location.

The results show that the rate of Covid-related admissions fell by 75 per cent in 80 to 83-year-olds vaccinated within 35 to 41 days of the first Pfizer dose. The rate of people getting Covid also dropped by 70 per cent, with the number of positive tests falling from 15.3 per 100,000 people to 4.6. The authors conclude: “The nationwide vaccination of older adults in England with the [Pfizer] vaccine reduced the burden of Covid-19.”

Yesterday, Sir Simon Stevens, chief executive of the NHS, confirmed to the Health Service Journal: “Vaccines are successfully reducing hospitalisations and deaths amongst the cohorts that have had the vaccine.”

The figures also suggest that the link between infections and admissions has been broken by the vaccine programme. While nearly 40 per cent of unvaccinated people who were infected ended up in hospital, just 32 per cent of the vaccinated cohort did.

Yesterday, Tim Spector, professor of genetic epidemiology at King’s College London and lead scientist on the ZOE Covid Symptom Study app, said he was “quite surprised” by the Prime Minister’s comments, accusing him of “living in a slightly different world”.

“The vaccination programme has been hugely successful and anyone who says it isn’t really isn’t looking at the data,” he said. “Even last summer we were still seeing cases in care homes and hospital outbreaks etc. By vaccinating hospital staff and the elderly we broke that deadly cycle.

“So there’s absolutely no doubt in my mind that the drop in rates is mainly due to the vaccination. Obviously lockdowns do have some effect, but the peak of infections was Jan 1 and that would have reflected what was going on a week before that, so actually you can’t link the lockdown to exactly the drop in cases.”

Prof Spector, who was speaking to Talk Radio, added: “I think vaccination has really saved us. After the second [dose] you’re twentyfold less risk for getting infected, so to say that doesn’t count is clearly not very scientific.”

Last week, researchers at Imperial College found that the rate of infection fell in all age groups and regions in those two months, with figures also indicating the vaccine rollout could be breaking the link between infections, deaths and hospital admissions.

According to the latest round of the Real-time Assessment of Community Transmission (React-1) study, one in 500 people on average was carrying the virus in March, a 60 per cent reduction. Steven Riley, professor of infectious disease dynamics at Imperial College, said the team had seen “some divergence” between observed patterns of infection and patterns of death since January.

“We think this probably suggests that the mass vaccination is breaking that link to some degree between infections and deaths,” he said.

Yesterday, experts said it was not surprising the public was questioning why restrictions were still needed.

Prof David Spiegelhalter, chairman of the Winton Centre for Risk and Evidence Communication at the University of Cambridge, told Radio 4’s Today programme: “Deaths are lower than the five-year average. Cases, hospitalisations, they’re all very low and this was completely predictable, that around now people will say, ‘why do we need to wait another two months before we are free of all these restrictions?’ I’m glad I’m not in charge because I’d probably say, oh come on let’s have a go, but they do not want to have to go backwards.”

Yesterday, the Government was accused of allowing “sloppy” data to be presented to the public which overestimated the number of people dying from infections. Figures from the Office for National Statistics show that almost 25 per cent of people registered as Covid deaths died “with” the virus, rather than “from” it.

Disease expert Prof Hugh Pennington said: “The definition of somebody dying from Covid is that they’ve had a positive test within the last month or the month before they died. And the assumption is then made that it was Covid finished them off, as it were. That’s very, very sloppy really.”

‘I think vaccination has saved us. After the second [dose] you’re twentyfold less risk for getting infected’