Clinical effectiveness of COVID‐19 vaccination in solid organ transplant recipients

Aslam, Saima; Adler, Eric; Mekeel, Kristin; Little, Susan J.

GOAL: We aimed to assess the incidence rate of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID‐19) in vaccinated versus unvaccinated solid organ transplant recipients (SOTR) at our center. METHODS: We abstracted the following clinical data from our transplant registry from 1/1/2021 to 6/2/2021: demographics, details of COVID‐19 vaccination, incidence of COVID‐19, and related mortality. We calculated incidence of symptomatic COVID‐19 per 1000/person days at risk and incidence rate ratio (IRR). RESULTS: Among 2151 SOTRs, 912 were fully vaccinated, and 1239 were controls (1151 unvaccinated, 88 partially vaccinated). Almost 70% of vaccinated subjects received the mRNA‐1273 vaccine. There were 65 cases of COVID‐19 that occurred during the study period – four occurred among fully vaccinated individuals and 61 among controls (including two in partially vaccinated individuals). Incidence rate for COVID‐19 was 0.065 (95% CI 0.024–0.17) per 1000 person days in vaccinated versus 0.34 (95% CI 0.26–0.44) per 1000/person days in the control group; IRR was 0.19 (95% CI 0.049 −0.503, p < 0.005). There were no COVID‐19 related deaths in the four breakthrough infections and two of 61 (3.3%) among controls. CONCLUSION: We demonstrate real world clinical effectiveness of COVID‐19 vaccination in SOTRs with an almost 80% reduction in the incidence of symptomatic COVID‐19 versus unvaccinated SOTRs during the same time.