A study of 22 million people in France shows the benefit of vaccination against severe forms of Covid requiring hospitalization and which can lead to death.
- Epi-Phare has conducted the largest study on the effects of anti-Covid vaccination
- Vaccines would greatly reduce the risk of developing a severe form of the disease
- These results are for people aged 50 and over five months after receiving the second dose
These are only temporary data but they are reassuring at this stage of the pandemic: according to a study of 22 million people in France and published on October 11 on the ANSM website, vaccination against Covid-19 would reduce the risk of hospitalization or death by 90% in people aged 50 and over. A result that confirms those of real-life analyzes carried out in Great Britain, Israel and the United States. But the particularity of the study conducted in France is to be to date “the largest conducted in the world” on the effects of vaccination.
Researchers from the Epi-Phare structure, which combines Health Insurance and the Medicines Agency, studied the data of 11 million French people over the age of 50 vaccinated to compare them with those of 11 million non-vaccinated people belonging to the same age group, this over the period from December 2020 – the time when the first vaccinations were carried out in France – until July 2021. Result: the reduction in the risk of hospitalization is greater than 90%. On the other hand, this figure is only valid for a period of 5 months following the date of the second injection, the hindsight to know the effects of the vaccine in the longer term does not exist for the moment.
Effectiveness preserved against the Delta variant
And this gain linked to vaccination would be valid even against the Delta variant, even if the figures are a little lower: over the last month of the study – from June 20, 2021 to the end of July 2021 -, it is say at the time when the Delta variant has become the largely dominant cause of infections, the effectiveness of the vaccine against the risk of hospitalization remains at 84% in those over 75 years old and 92% in those 50-74 years old. However, the researchers recognize that “this period remains very short to assess the real impact of vaccination on this variant” and specify that “the study must be continued to integrate the data from August and September 2021”.
Another precision necessary to judge the results of this study, this one relates only to the effectiveness of the vaccines against the serious forms. It does not provide clear indications as to whether vaccines prevent you from becoming infected and transmitting the disease to other people. Even if the epidemiologist Mahmoud Zureik, director of Epi-Phare, recalls that the priority is to protect populations against serious forms of the disease: “An epidemic without serious forms is no longer an epidemic”, assures- he.
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