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Lookup NU author(s): Dr Richard Holleyman, Emeritus Professor Paul BurtonORCiD
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0).
Copyright: © 2024 Bauer-Staeb et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. BACKGROUND: We aimed to estimate the relative risk of mortality following a first positive SARS-CoV-2 test during the first, second, and third waves of the COVID-19pandemic in England by age, sex, and vaccination status, taking into account pre-existing health conditions and lifestyle factors. METHODS: We conducted a retrospective cohort study of all individuals registered with the National Health Service (NHS) in England from 1 March 2020 to September 2022. Data for all individuals were obtained and linked including primary care records, hospital admission episodes, SARS-CoV-2 test results, vaccinations, and death registrations. We fitted Cox Proportional Hazards models with time dependent covariates for confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infection to model the risk of subsequent mortality. RESULTS: The hazard ratio for death after testing positive for subsequent, compared with those not testing positive, amongst unvaccinated individuals, ranged from 11 to 89 by age and sex, in the first four weeks following a positive test in wave one and reduced to 14 to 50 in wave three. This hazard was further reduced amongst those who had three vaccines to between 1.4 and 7 in wave three. CONCLUSIONS: This study provides robust estimates of increased mortality risk among those who tested positive over the first three waves of the COVID-19 pandemic in England. The estimates show the impact of various factors affecting the risk of mortality from COVID-19. The results provide the first step towards estimating the magnitude and pattern of mortality displacement due to COVID-19, which is essential to understanding subsequent mortality rates in England.
Author(s): Bauer-Staeb C, Holleyman RJ, Barnard S, Hughes A, Dunn S, Fox S, Fitzpatrick J, Newton J, Fryers P, Burton P, Goldblatt P
Publication type: Article
Publication status: Published
Journal: PLoS ONE
Year: 2024
Volume: 19
Issue: 10
Online publication date: 09/10/2024
Acceptance date: 07/05/2024
Date deposited: 21/10/2024
ISSN (electronic): 1932-6203
Publisher: Public Library of Science
URL: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0304110
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0304110
Data Access Statement: This study required the linkage of record-level population healthcare datasets using identifiable data that were available to the Office for Health Improvement and Disparities (OHID) and the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) under the direction of the UK Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, for the purpose of responding to the COVID-19 pandemic. Onward sharing of the study dataset with any other party is against UK law. Practically, replicating the linked database would be an immense task, but all the data used are held within NHS England's Data Access Request Service and may be requested from them - enquiries@nhsdigital.nhs.uk, https://digital.nhs.uk/services/data-access-request-service-dars.
PubMed id: 39383163
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