Ohio and Florida data show more Republican excess COVID-19 deaths
New statistics from Ohio and Florida published by the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) show that Republicans have suffered more COVID-related excess deaths than Democrats, adding to the literature that demonstrates the link between political party affiliation, vaccination uptake, and COVID-19 mortality.
To conduct the study, researchers linked voter registration data in Ohio and Florida to mortality data to assess the individual-level association between political party affiliation and excess mortality.
The data show that the excess COVID-19 death rate for Republicans was 5.4 percentage points, or 76%, higher than the excess death rate for Democrats, and it increased after vaccines became widely available. After the introduction of vaccines, the excess death rate gap between Republicans and Democrats widened from 1.6 percentage points (22% of the Democrat excess death rate) to 10.4 percentage points (153% of the Democrat excess death rate).
Previous studies have shown Republican-leaning, or "red "counties have had higher COVID-19 mortality rates than Democratic-leaning counties, but this is the first attempt to understand the excess death risk at the individual level.
"Registered Republicans in Florida and Ohio had higher excess death rates than registered Democrats, driven by a large mortality gap in the period after all adults were eligible for vaccines," the authors concluded. "These results adjust for county-by-age differences in excess deaths during the pandemic, suggesting that there were within-age-by-county differences in excess death associated with political party affiliation."
Sep 30 NBER working paper
Study: mRNA boosters extend protection for 4 to 5 months
A new nationwide US study based on data collected from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC's) VISION Network shows mRNA boosters extend protection against moderate and severe disease for 4 to 5 months.
The study, published yesterday in BMJ, is based on more than 893,000 adults in 10 states followed for 18 months. The authors used hospital admission as the metric for severe disease, comparing positive COVID-19 hospitalized patients to case controls who tested negative for the virus. Hospital admissions from Jan 17, 2021 to Jul 12, 2022 were included in the study.
During the Omicron period, vaccine effectiveness against COVID-19 requiring admission to hospital was 89% (95% confidence interval 88% to 90%) within 2 months after dose 3 but waned to 66% (63% to 68%) by 4 to 5 months. Vaccine effectiveness of three doses against emergency department or urgent care visits was 83% (82% to 84%) initially but waned to 46% (44% to 49%) by 4 to 5 months.
Waning was most evident in immunosuppressed individuals. "During the omicron period, vaccine effectiveness waned within six months of the third dose by about 20 percentage points among those without immunocompromising conditions and by more than 40 percentage points among those with immunocompromising conditions," the authors wrote.
In a Regenstrief Institute press release, the authors of the study wrote that the data should compel Americans to get a booster if they have not done so yet.
"If it has been four months or longer since your last COVID booster, or if you had the initial two shots and have never received a booster, you should strongly consider a bivalent booster, which targets ancestral strains of the COVID virus plus subvariants Omicron BA.4 and BA.5," said study co-author Shaun Grannis, MD, Regenstrief Institute vice president for data and analytics.
"The evidence that boosters can keep you healthy is compelling. Combining a COVID booster with an annual flu shot will help you make it through the respiratory disease season."
Oct 3 BMJ study
Oct 3 Regenstrief Institute press release
Kids from low-income areas at triple risk of COVID hospital care: study
A study of more than 688,000 children and adolescents in Germany finds that those living in low-income areas were three times more likely as those in less-deprived areas to be hospitalized for COVID-19.
In the study, published yesterday in JAMA Network Open, a team led by University of Dusseldorf researchers assessed COVID-19 hospitalizations among 688,705 children aged 0 to 18 years enrolled in a statutory health insurance plan from Jan 1, 2020, to Jul 13, 2021. Average age was 8.3 years, and 48.9% were female.
COVID-19 hospitalization was rare, at 0.2%, but was 3.02 more likely in children living in low-income areas than among those in more well-resourced areas and 36% more likely in children whose parents were unemployed long term than those with working parents.
Participants whose parents had low-paying jobs had 29% higher odds of hospitalization than those whose parents earned more.
"This finding suggests that attention must be paid to children with SARS-CoV-2 from vulnerable families, and closer monitoring should be considered," the authors wrote. "A number of explanatory factors, including comorbidities, were taken into account, but their analysis yielded no clear picture about underlying processes," according to a summary of the key findings.
In a related commentary, Thomas Dobbs, MD, MPH, and April Carson, PhD, both of the University of Mississippi, noted that children living in areas with greater inequality in income generally have worse health outcomes.
"This is particularly stark in the United States, a country that ironically has one of the highest per capita incomes but some of the worst health measures when compared with other developed nations," they wrote.
Dobbs and Carson called for community-based interventions to address food and housing insecurity, improve access to healthcare, and reduce barriers to upward social mobility, such as zoning ordinances restricting multifamily housing to high-poverty areas. "Policies and legislation are needed that foster equitable environments, devoid of the societal ills of income inequality, poverty, and racism, if we want to achieve maximal health for all," they concluded.
Oct 3 JAMA Netw Open study and commentary
