Recent cancer diagnosis or treatment lowers COVID-19 vaccine effectiveness, UK Covid Vaccine Research Hub

This new study, published in the European Journal of Cancer, set out to evaluate the effectiveness of the third vaccine dose in over 360,000 people with cancer, compared to the general population, using data from Public Health England ' s national cancer dataset between December 2020 to December 2021. Overall, the researchers found that third vaccines doses were less effective in people with cancer than in the general population and concluded that many people with cancer remain at increased risk of infection, even after three doses. Lower vaccine effectiveness was found to be associated with: a cancer diagnosis in the previous 12 months lymphoma recent systemic anti-cancer therapy (SACT) or radiotherapy In the case of people with lymphoma, there was a marked reduction of vaccine effectiveness against breakthrough infection and severe disease. Overall, vaccine effectiveness for this cohort was found to be: 59.1% against breakthrough infections 62.8% against symptomatic infections 80.5% against hospitalisation from COVID-19 94.5% against death from COVID-19
Source: Current Awareness Service for Health (CASH) - Category: Consumer Health News Source Type: news