People who have had a booster or third dose of vaccine have a 93 per cent lower risk of death involving Covid-19 compared with the unvaccinated, new research suggests.
Mortality rates were found to be "consistently lower" across all age groups who had received an extra dose of vaccine compared to the unvaccinated, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS).
The research used age-standardised mortality rates and took into account differences in age structure and population size, to allow for comparisons between vaccination groups.
The age-adjusted risk of death involving Covid-19 between July and December last year for fully-vaccinated people in England who had received a booster or third dose at least 21 days previously was 93.4 per cent lower compared with unvaccinated people.
While it was 81.2 per cent lower for those who had only received two doses.
For most of 2021, mortality rates for death involving Covid-19 for people who had received two doses of vaccine remained well below the equivalent figures for people who were unvaccinated, the ONS found.
Rates among double-jabbed people began to increase at the end of last year, with deaths jumping from 92.0 per 100,000 in October to 221.1 in November and 367.7 in December.
This may have been driven by a change in the composition of the double-jabbed group, with the majority of older people having received a booster or third dose by this point, the ONS said.
It might also be connected to “waning protection from prior vaccination”.
While Covid-19 mortality rates for unvaccinated people stood at 462.2 per 100,000 in December, it was just 33.1 for people within 21 days of an extra dose and 24.5 for those more than 21 days after an extra dose – far below the equivalent figures for those who were single-jabbed (377.7) and double-jabbed (367.7).
The ONS stressed that mortality rates should not be taken as a measure of vaccine effectiveness.
The figures have been adjusted to account for differences in age and population size, but there may be other differences between the groups, such as underlying health issues, that could affect mortality rates.
The research found that from July to December 2021, rates for people who had only received one dose of vaccine were similar to those for unvaccinated people, particularly for older age groups.
This was possibly because of the longer length of time since people had received a first dose, leading to waning protection from prior vaccination.
It may also be due to “the exclusion of people who had received a first and third dose but not a second dose from the analysis, because of incomplete vaccination records,” the ONS added.
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