An analysis of care home outbreaks and care home data has been conducted in Cheshire and Merseyside which shows a single dose of Covid-19 vaccine reduces hospitalisation and death of care home residents.
The analysis was undertaken in response to a question about the efficacy of the vaccination programme in care homes, as outbreaks continued to occur in care homes who already vaccinated their residents.
A “natural experiment method” was used to analyse the data, and the justification for using this method is briefly explained in one of the slides.
It was found that one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine, either Pfizer or AstraZeneca, is highly effective in reducing disease, hospitalisation and death. A second dose can only be expected to improve on these good outcomes.
Overall the number needed to vaccinate with COVID-19 vaccine to prevent one resident from hospitalisation or death are 35 and 18 respectively.