DETROIT — Vaccination against COVID-19 significantly reduces the risk of hospitalization or death from the novel coronavirus, according to results of a Beaumont Health study published Thursday in the medical journal Lancet Regional Health – Americas.
The large-scale study looked at data without personal identification from 11,834 people who tested positive for COVID-19 at Beaumont emergency centers between Dec. 15, 2020, and April 30, 2021.
The analysis determined that the hospitalization rate and emergency center visit rate was 96% lower for fully vaccinated patients than for unvaccinated patients, according a press release from the eight-hospital health care system based in Southfield.
Breakthrough COVID-19 infections in people who were fully vaccinated comprised 1% of COVID-19 emergency care visits during the study period, the researchers found.
The study proves what health care providers had already observed — that vaccination protects people from severe COVID-19 disease, hospitalization and death, said lead author Dr. Amit Bahi, an emergency medicine physician and director of emergency ultrasound for Beaumont Hospital in Royal Oak.
“The main point is your odds of going to the hospital for COVID if you’re vaccinated is almost zero," Bahi said in a Thursday statement. "You might get ill. You might feel bad for a couple of days. But you’re typically not going to go to the hospital and you’re not going to die.”
During the study period, there were 1.29 emergency center COVID-19 visits per 100,000 persons among fully vaccinated individuals, compared with 12.88 visits per 100,000 partially vaccinated patients and 22.61 visits per 100,000 unvaccinated patients.
Elderly patients with significant co-morbidities who required hospital-based treatment tended to suffer more severe outcomes regardless of their vaccination status, the researchers found.
Of the eight deaths and six intubations that occurred in the fully vaccinated group, all were in patients over the age of 65. There were 384 deaths among the unvaccinated patients, which was a much larger cohort, the study found. Some patients as young as 21 died while in the hospital, Beaumont Health reported.
“This study emphasizes that we need to be very protective of our elderly, shielding them from potential exposure, knowing that they can be so vulnerable,” said Dr. Barbara Ducatman, chief medical officer of Beaumont, Royal Oak. “That is especially true for those who may suffer from diabetes, heart or pulmonary disease or other co-morbidities.”
