Supplemental Oxygen Mini Study

Lessons from an undisclosed NHS Trust

An article entitled ‘No, vaccinated people are not ‘just as infectious’ as unvaccinated people if they get COVID’ in theconversation.com that was published back in Nov 2021 refers to results contained in a medRxiv paper by Po Ying Chia et al (Jul 2021) in which they claim:

‘Despite significantly older age in the vaccine breakthrough group, the odds of severe COVID-19 requiring oxygen supplementation was significantly lower following vaccination (adjusted odds ratio 0.07 95%CI: 0.015-0.335, p=0.001)’

In plain English what this is telling us is that vaccinated patients with breakthrough COVID-19 symptoms didn’t require supplemental oxygen treatment as often as unvaccinated patients. For those not familiar with odds ratios a ratio of 1.0 would mean no difference in oxygen use between patient groups, a ratio of 10.0 would mean vaccinated patients would be ten times more likely to need oxygen and a ratio of 0.1 would mean vaccinated patients are ten times less likely to need oxygen. A value …