Group Vaccination Five Days before a COVID-19 Outbreak in a Long-Term Care Facility

Mathias W Pletz; Sabine Trommer; Steffi Kolanos; Norman Rose; Veit Kinne; Riccardo Spott; Michael Baier; Isabel Lange

doi:10.3390/vaccines9121450

Group Vaccination Five Days before a COVID-19 Outbreak in a Long-Term Care Facility

Vaccines (Basel). 2021 Dec 8;9(12):1450. doi: 10.3390/vaccines9121450.

Authors

Mathias W Pletz^{1

2}, Sabine Trommer³, Steffi Kolanos¹, Norman Rose^{1

2}, Veit Kinne¹, Riccardo Spott¹, Michael Baier⁴, Isabel Lange¹

Affiliations

¹ Institute of Infectious Diseases and Infection Control, Jena University Hospital, Friedrich Schiller University, 07747 Jena, Germany.
² Center for Sepsis Control and Care, Jena University Hospital, Friedrich Schiller University, 07747 Jena, Germany.
³ Public Health Department, City of Jena, 07743 Jena, Germany.
⁴ Institute of Medical Microbiology, Jena University Hospital, Friedrich Schiller University, 07747 Jena, Germany.

Abstract

Rapid vaccination may be of benefit in long-term care facilities (LTCF) that are affected by an ongoing COVID-19 outbreak. However, there are concerns regarding the safety and effectiveness of such an approach, particularly regarding the vaccination of pre-symptomatic patients. Here, we report the effectiveness of vaccination in a German LTCF hit by an outbreak that was detected 5 days after the first vaccine doses were administered. In detail, 66.7% of the unvaccinated patients experienced an unfavorable course; this proportion was much lower (33.3%) among the vaccinated patients. Even though this study is limited by a small number of patients, the observation and the comparison with related published data shows that vaccination (i) is safe and (ii) may still be of benefit when given shortly before an infection or even in pre-symptomatic LTCF-patients.

Keywords: COVID-19; long-term care facility; mass vaccination; outbreaks; pre-symptomatic patients.

Publication types

Case Reports