With the sharp drop in contamination and hospitalization curves in recent weeks, Covid-19 patients are no longer in the spotlight. However, according to the latest statistics, there are still 10,000 people hospitalized and 1,560 in critical care in France following contamination. However, it is today impossible to know precisely how many vaccinated people are among these patients admitted to hospital.
The effectiveness of vaccination has already been highlighted by numerous scientific studies. Conducted in several countries, they have shown that anti-Covid vaccines protect against serious forms and the risk of hospitalization. UK, a study based on 14,000 people infected with the Delta variant (or “Indian”) found that Pfizer or AstraZeneca vaccines lowered the risk of hospitalization by almost 90% after two doses.
In France, the Epi-Phare study, published on May 21, also shows that in those over 75, this risk decreases by 87% after two injections. But this study covered the period from January to March, and therefore does not allow us to know the current status of people hospitalized.
A database problem
However, other countries have such data. The United Kingdom, in fact, published on June 18 a technical briefing which allows to know a little more. The document indicates that among the 2,176 people hospitalized in intensive care after infection with the Delta variant between February and mid-June, 66% were not vaccinated and 24% had received only one dose. Only 10% of admitted patients had therefore received both doses of the vaccine.
So, how to explain this lack of data in France? This is in fact a technical difficulty. As explained this Wednesday Public Health France to 20 minutes, “The vaccination status of the French population (Covid vaccine) and hospital stays for COVID-19 (SI-VIC) are recorded in two independent databases”. It is therefore impossible to know, quickly, how many vaccinated people are currently hospitalized, since this information is compartmentalized.
Convince the undecided
Fortunately, that should change soon. “A common identifier was added very recently, allowing these databases to be paired,” adds Public Health France. The country should therefore be able to produce the same statistics very quickly as in the United Kingdom.
Good news for Elias Orphelin, contributor to the CovidTracker site: “Until now, it was not possible to say precisely how effective the vaccination policy was in France. We could refer to other countries, but it was not perfect because there are always factors that change (weather, confinement, different variants…) ”.
“The whole point of having this new data is to be able to convince those who are still hesitant to be vaccinated, because they believe that the data is not sufficient or that they do not see the benefit for them », Continues Elias Orphelin. Finally, he concludes, “knowing the real effectiveness of the vaccine will allow us to know what proportion of people must be vaccinated to achieve a form of collective immunity”.