This was based on information published in the UK Week 3 COVID-19 vaccine surveillance report Week 3 20 January 2022:
I will repost the table again:
This table is based on actual cases and overnight hospital admissions over the specified 4 weeks. It clearly shows a benefit of the third dose in reducing hospital admissions over that period. How long that benefit last?
Some poster have referred to Table 12 which summarises infections, hospital admissions and deaths per 100,000 of the population. This is different to the percentage table above because the above table estimates your risk of hospitalisation once you are a confirmed case.
Table 12 needs talking about. It shows a much higher risk of hospitalisation and death if you are unvaccinated but also shows an increased risk of infection if you are vaccinated. You can get the same value for some of my percentages in the above table from Table 12 (eg. Hospitalisation rate in Unvaccinated >80 = 347.2 per 100,000/1,374.8 per 100,000 infections gives a "raw" hospitalisation rate of 25.25% = the same figure in the above table)
However, Table 12 can be missleading to the extent you think you are comparing the vaccinated vs unvaccinated.
We know from the pervious report released a week earlier that "Based on antibody testing of blood donors, 98.7% of the adult population now have antibodies to COVID-19 from either infection or vaccination compared to 24.1% that have antibodies from infection alone." What this means is that, based on blood donors tests anyway, there is only 1.3% of the England population that has not been exposed to either the vaccine or virus through previous infection. Consequently, the vast majority of the unvaccinated group really represent a group that has, to some extent, immunity from prior infection. Therefore, the lower infection rate in this group should not be all that surprising. The above table gives a better picture of your risk of hospitalisation by age and vaccination status if you catch Covid-19.
