Effectiveness of vaccines in preventing hospitalization due to COVID-19 A multicenter hospital-based case-control study, Germany, June 2021 to January 2022

We included 852 patients in a prospectively recruiting multicenter matched case-control study in Germany to assess vaccine effectiveness (VE) in preventing COVID-19-associated hospitalization during the Delta-variant dominance. The two-dose VE was 89 % (95 % CI 84-93 %) overall, 79 % in patients with more than two comorbidities and 77 % in adults aged 60-75 years. A third dose increased the VE to more than 93 % in all patient-subgroups. (c) 2022 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

Automated summary

We conducted a prospective multicenter matched case-control study in Germany, including 852 patients, to evaluate the vaccine effectiveness (VE) in preventing COVID-19 hospitalization during the dominance of the Delta variant. The two-dose VE was 89% overall, 79% in patients with more than two comorbidities, and 77% in adults aged 60-75 years. A third dose increased the VE to over 93% in all patient subgroups.