Vaccination status and disease severity of COVID-19 in different phases of the pandemic.

ABSTRACT

This study aimed to explore the clinical profile and the impact of vaccination status on various health outcomes among COVID-19 patients diagnosed in different phases of the pandemic, during which several variants of concern (VOCs) circulated in South Carolina (SC). The current study included 861,526 adult COVID-19 patients diagnosed between January 2021 and April 2022. We extracted their information about demographic characteristics, vaccination, and clinical outcomes from a statewide electronic health record database. Multiple logistic regression models were used to compare clinical outcomes by vaccination status in different pandemic phases, accounting for key covariates (e.g. historical comorbidities). A reduction in mortality was observed among COVID-19 patients during the whole study period, although there were fluctuations during the Delta and Omicron dominant periods. Compared to non-vaccinated patients, full-vaccinated COVID-19 patients had lower mortality in all dominant variants, including Pre-alpha (adjusted odds ratio [aOR] 0.33; 95%CI 0.15-0.72), Alpha (aOR 0.58; 95%CI 0.42-0.82), Delta (aOR 0.28; 95%CI 0.25-0.31), and Omicron (aOR 0.29; 95%CI 0.26-0.33) phases. Regarding hospitalization, full-vaccinated parties showed lower risk of hospitalization than non-vaccinated patients in Delta (aOR 0.44; 95%CI 0.41-0.47) and Omicron (aOR 0.53; 95%CI 0.50-0.57) dominant periods. The findings demonstrated the protection effect of the COVID-19 vaccines against all VOCs, although some of the full-vaccinated population still have symptoms to varying degrees from COVID-19 disease at different phases of the pandemic.