Older adults in their 80s and 90s are well-protected against COVID-19 with the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, according to a new study from Germany.
The efficacy of the vaccine in adults aged 80 years and older was not fully assessed in the drugmaker’s clinical trials due to low participant numbers in that age group. The researchers aimed to fill in this missing data by looking at hospitalizations and mortality from more than 700,000 people aged 80 years or older living in Bavaria, Germany.
The study, conducted between January and April 2021, found a high level of protection against the SARS-CoV-2 infection and mortality after two doses of the vaccine. There was no difference in efficacy between participants aged 80 to 89 years and an over-90 age group, reported Rüdiger von Kries, Ph.D., of Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich.
Notably, when unvaccinated, women were more likely to be infected by the virus than men, and men had greater odds of hospitalization and death. But sex differences in severity and mortality disappeared after vaccination.
The results suggest that the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine is equally effective for protecting against severe outcomes in elderly men and women, von Kries and colleagues concluded.
The study was published in PLOS One.
