Mukherjee Abhiroop, Panayotov George, Sen Rik, Dutta Harsha, Ghosh Pulak
The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Clear Water Bay, Hong Kong.
University of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW, Australia.
Sci Adv. 2022 May 6;8(18):eabn4274. doi: 10.1126/sciadv.abn4274.
Despite an urgent need, authorities in many countries are struggling to track COVID vaccine effectiveness (VE) because standard VE measures cannot be calculated from their public health data. Here, we use regression discontinuity design (RDD) to estimate VE, motivated by such limitations in public health records from West Bengal, India. These data cover 8,755,414 COVID vaccinations (90% ChAdOx1 NCov-19, almost all first doses, until May 2021), 8,179,635 tests, and 141,800 hospitalizations. The standard RDD exploits age-based vaccine eligibility; we also introduce a new RDD-based VE measure that improves on the standard one when better data are available. Applying these measures, we find a VE of 55.2% (95% confidence interval: 44.5 to 65.0%) against symptomatic disease, 80.1% (63.3 to 88.8%) against hospitalizations, and 85.5% (24.8 to 99.2%) against intensive care/critical care/high dependency admissions or deaths. Other data-deficient countries with age-based eligibility for any vaccine-and not just COVID vaccines-can also use these easy-to-implement measures to inform their own immunization policies.
尽管迫切需要，但许多国家的当局仍在努力追踪新冠疫苗的有效性（VE），因为无法根据其公共卫生数据计算标准的疫苗有效性指标。在此，鉴于印度西孟加拉邦公共卫生记录存在此类局限性，我们采用回归断点设计（RDD）来估计疫苗有效性。这些数据涵盖了8755414剂新冠疫苗接种（90%为ChAdOx1新冠疫苗，几乎都是第一剂，截至2021年5月）、8179635次检测以及141800例住院病例。标准的回归断点设计利用基于年龄的疫苗接种资格；当有更好的数据时，我们还引入了一种新的基于回归断点设计的疫苗有效性指标，该指标对标准指标进行了改进。应用这些指标，我们发现针对有症状疾病的疫苗有效性为55.2%（95%置信区间：44.5%至65.0%），针对住院治疗的有效性为80.1%（63.3%至88.8%），针对重症监护/危重症监护/高依赖病房收治或死亡的有效性为85.5%（24.8%至99.2%）。其他有基于年龄的任何疫苗（不仅仅是新冠疫苗）接种资格但数据不足的国家，也可以使用这些易于实施的指标来为其自身的免疫政策提供参考。
