COVID-19 vaccine
COVID-19 vaccineiStock

A new study of coronavirus patients suggests vaccination may be associated with a nearly one-third reduction in fatality rates among hospitalized COVID patients.

The study was conducted from April to June 2021 at a cancer treatment center in Jhajjar, India which was repurposed to serve as a COVID ward.

Researchers looked at 2,080 COVID hospitalizations at the treatment center from April through June, dividing the patients into cohorts based on their age, gender, vaccination status, comorbidities, time of arrival after infection, and other factors.

As a whole, the subjects studied had a 19.5% case fatality rate, with 406 patients dying.

The overwhelming majority of patients who died at had least one comorbidity (65%), and 29% had two or more.

Among the study’s findings were that early hospitalization and vaccination against COVID were both associated with significant reductions in the case fatality rate among hospitalized patients.

“Vaccination reduced the odds of death by 30%,” researchers wrote, with early hospitalization (defined as admittance to the hospital in the second week after infection rather than the third week) being associated with a 36% reduction in the case fatality rate.

“Strategies should be made to improve vaccination rates and early admission of patients with moderate and severe COVID-19 to improve outcomes,” the researchers concluded.

The study does suffer from some serious limitations, however, as it is a retrospective cohort study, assessing group outcomes after the fact.

In addition, the study had a very small sample of fully vaccinated patients, just 31 out of a total sample of 2,080 subjects, while a large majority of all patients (1,314) were completely unvaccinated.

A total of 294 non-vaccinated patients died (22.37% case fatality rate), compared to one fully vaccinated patient out of 31 (3.22% case fatality rate), 48 partially vaccinated patients (18.60% CFR), and 43 who died less than two weeks after a first dose (20.00% CFR) of the vaccine.

Furthermore, the study failed to specify which vaccines the patients had received. Most of the half a billion doses distributed in India are from the two domestically produced varieties, COVAXIN and COVISHIELD. Neither vaccine utilizes the mRNA technology used by Pfizer and BioNTech for the vaccine which is the primary jab distributed in Israel.

Initial data for the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine gathered in March showed a far higher (96.7%) reduction in COVID-related deaths.