Impact of CoronaVac on Covid-19 outcomes of elderly adults in a large and socially unequal Brazilian city: A target trial emulation study.

Background: Although CoronaVac was the only Covid-19 vaccine adopted in the first months of the Brazilian vaccination campaign, randomized clinical trials to evaluate its efficacy in elderly adults were limited. In this study, we use routinely collected surveillance and SARS-CoV-2 vaccination and testing data comprising the population of the fifth largest city of Brazil to evaluate the effectiveness of CoronaVac in adults 60+ years old against severe outcomes.

Methods: Using large observational databases on vaccination and surveillance data from the city of Fortaleza, Brazil, we defined a retrospective cohort including 324,302 eligible adults aged ≥60 years to evaluate the effectiveness of the CoronaVac vaccine. The cohort included individuals vaccinated between January 21, 2021, and August 31, 2021, who were matched with unvaccinated persons at the time of rollout following a 1:1 ratio according to baseline covariates of age, sex, and Human Development Index of the neighborhood of residence. Only Covid-19-related severe outcomes were included in the analysis: hospitalization, ICU admission, and death. Vaccine effectiveness for each outcome was calculated by using the risk ratio between the two groups, with the risk obtained by the Kaplan-Meier estimator.

Results: We obtained 62,643 matched pairs for assessing the effectiveness of the two-dose regimen of CoronaVac. The demographic profile of the matched population was statistically representative of the population of Fortaleza. Using the cumulative incidence as the risk associated with each group, starting at day 14 since the receipt of the second dose, we found an 82.3 % (95 % CI 66.3-93.9) effectiveness against Covid-19-related death, 68.4 % (95 % CI 42.3-86.4) against ICU admission, and 55.8 % (95 % CI 42.7-68.3) against hospital admission.

Conclusions: Our results show that, despite critical delays in vaccine delivery and limited evidence in efficacy trial estimates, CoronaVac contributed to preventing deaths and severe morbidity due to Covid-19 in elderly adults.