COVID-19 vaccine effectiveness against SARS-CoV-2-confirmed hospitalisation in the eastern part of the WHO European Region (2022-2023): a test-negative case-control study from the EuroSAVE network.

Background: Understanding COVID-19 vaccine effectiveness (VE) in preventing severe disease is critical to inform vaccine policy. We used the test-negative design to estimate VE against SARS-CoV-2-confirmed hospitalisation in adults ≥18 years in the eastern WHO European Region.

Methods: We included patients hospitalised for severe acute respiratory infection (SARI) at sentinel surveillance sites in Albania, Georgia, Kyrgyzstan, North Macedonia, Serbia, and in Kosovo.

Evaluation of factors with potential influence on [F]FDG radiochemical synthesis yield.

[F]FDG radiopharmaceutical production is performed with automatic synthesis modules, which enables to carry out the production process safely, reliably and reproducibly. This study aimed to investigate the factors which may influence and give inconsistent radiochemical synthesis yield, as well as common pitfalls in the synthesis process which can occur. We evaluated more than 500 batches in the overall study.