Background: Studies have reported evidence about the effectiveness of a third dose with BNT162b2 for preventing hospitalization and death by COVID-19. However, there is little evidence regarding other primary vaccine schedules such as BBIBP-CorV and ChAdOx1-S. We estimated the relative vaccine effectiveness (RVE) of the booster dose versus the primary regimens of COVID-19 vaccines based on BBIBP-CorV, ChAdOx1-S, or BNT162b2 for preventing death during the Omicron wave in Peruvian adult people.
Methods: We carried out a nested case-control study with a risk set sampling of controls using data from Peru between December 20, 2021, and February 20, 2022 (during the Omicron wave). Data on vaccination, COVID-19 tests and deaths were collected from national surveillance databases. We performed conditional logistic regression models to estimate the RVE on the adult population. In addition, we executed sub-group analysis per age group (18 to 59 years, and 60 years or more) and per primary regime (based on BNT162b2, BBIBP-CorV, or ChAdOx1-S).
Results: Of the 11,188,332 people eligible to enter the study 1,974 met the case definition (death from COVID-19) and were matched to 9,183 controls. The overall RVE of a third dose to prevent death was 87.2% (84.2%-89.7%), which varied according to the primary regime (87.3% for BNT162b2, 82.0% for BBIPB-CorV-2, and 79.5% for ChAdOx-S). In older adults, the RVE was 87.1%, without significant variations according to the primary regime (86.1% for BNT162b2, 86.1 for BBIBP-CorV, and 82% for ChAdOx-S).
Conclusions: The booster) dose of vaccine against COVID-19 had a high RVE for preventing death by COVID-19 in the Peruvian population in all primary regimes of vaccines during the Omicron wave. This effect was consistent in people over 60 years of age, the group most vulnerable to die from this infection.
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