A tool developed by UK researchers identifies people at highest risk of severe outcomes – especially dying or being hospitalised – from SARS-CoV-2 infections, the coronavirus that causes COVID-19.
The QCOVID3 tool identifies people who, even after full or partial vaccination, remain most at residual risk from breakthrough infections.
The study, co-authored by Professor Julia Hippisley-Cox from Oxford University and Professor Aziz Sheikh from Edinburgh University and published in the BMJ, was based on over 6 million vaccinated people (over 5 million with both doses).
Professor Sheikh told medicalnewstoday.com: ‘Our new tool has been designed to identify those at high risk who may benefit from interventions such as vaccine booster doses or new treatments such as monoclonal antibodies, which can help reduce the risk of progression of SARS-CoV-2 infection to serious COVID-19 outcomes.’
The groups at highest risk (in descending order) were:
- people with Down syndrome
- people who have had a kidney transplant
- people with sickle cell disease
- residents of care homes
- people receiving chemotherapy
- people who have had a recent bone marrow transplant or solid organ transplant
- people with HIV or AIDS
- people with dementia
- people with Parkinson’s disease
- people with rare neurological conditions
- people with cirrhosis.
Vaccinated Pakistani and Indian individuals had a ‘twofold higher risk than white individuals’; but the authors noted this may reflect other, non-physiological factors (linked for example to behaviour, lifestyle, household size and occupation).
Importantly, the authors also noted there were so few deaths or hospitalisations among people who had received two doses that ‘most information about associations between predictors and mortality comes from individuals who have only received one dose’.
The authors also drew no distinction between the different vaccines administered.
