Breakthrough COVID-19 in cancer patients is often serious

Reuters - 07/06/2022 - A large proportion of vaccinated cancer patients who develop breakthrough COVID-19 require hospitalization, according to data collected by the American Society of Clinical Oncology and reported at the organization's annual meeting.

Researchers studied 231 patients who had breakthrough infections while receiving treatment for cancer or within a year of treatment. The patients had received at least one dose of a vaccine from Pfizer/BioNTech, Moderna or Johnson & Johnson.

Most of the breakthrough cases occurred more than six months later. Among patients with non-metastatic solid tumors and breakthrough infections, nearly 20% were hospitalized. Hospitalization rates for blood cancer patients with breakthrough COVID-19 ranged from 32% to 56%.

"While the fraction of patients in the ASCO registry with breakthrough cases who were hospitalized remained fairly constant throughout 2021 (about 40%), those with breakthrough cases occurring in the last month of 2021 and early 2022 had a lower hospitalization rate (at about 20%), which is consistent with less severe cases of COVID-19 in patients infected with the Omicron variant," the researchers said in a summary of their presentation.

"A majority of SARS-CoV-2 infections occurring six months or more after vaccination suggests waning vaccine efficacy over time that could be impacted by additional doses," they said.

SOURCE: https://bit.ly/3H5QllF ASCO 2022.



Posted on 7 June, 202221 June, 2022