COVID-19 Infection Risk amongst 14,104 Vaccinated Care Home Residents: A national observational longitudinal cohort study in Wales, United Kingdom, December 2020 to March 2021

Abstract

Background: Vaccinations for COVID-19 have been prioritised for older people living in care homes. However, vaccination trials included limited numbers of older people. Aim: We aimed to study infection rates of SARS-CoV-2 for older care home residents following vaccination and identify factors associated with increased risk of infection. Study Design and Setting: We conducted an observational data-linkage study including 14,104 vaccinated older care home residents in Wales (UK) using anonymised electronic health records and administrative data. Methods: We used Cox proportional hazards models to estimate hazard ratios (HRs) for the risk of testing positive for SARS-CoV-2 infection following vaccination, after landmark times of either 7 or 21-days post-vaccination. We adjusted hazard ratios for age, sex, frailty, prior SARS-CoV-2 infections and vaccination type. Results: We observed a small proportion of care home residents with positive PCR tests following vaccination 1.05% (N=148), with 90% of infections occurring within 28-days. For the 7-day landmark analysis we found a reduced risk of SARS-CoV-2 infection for vaccinated individuals who had a previous infection; HR (95% confidence interval) 0.54 (0.30,0.95), and an increased HR for those receiving the Pfizer-BioNTECH vaccine compared to the Oxford-AstraZeneca; 3.83 (2.45,5.98). For the 21-day landmark analysis we observed high HRs for individuals with low and intermediate frailty compared to those without; 4.59 (1.23,17.12) and 4.85 (1.68,14.04) respectively. Conclusions: Increased risk of infection after 21-days was associated with frailty. We found most infections occurred within 28-days of vaccination, suggesting extra precautions to reduce transmission risk should be taken in this time frame.