Vaccines Effective Against Variant Hospitalizations: DOH Study

OLYMPIA, WA — A new study from the Washington State Department of Health shows that COVID-19 vaccination is protecting patients from serious infections, even among patients carrying the more infectious COVID variants.

The study also found that four COVID-19 variants had higher risk of hospitalization, especially among the unvaccinated.

"When researchers looked at the variants separately, the same pattern of a lower risk of hospitalization for vaccinated people was seen in people infected with the Alpha, Gamma, or Delta variants," the DOH said.

Researchers also found that the Gamma and Beta variants had the highest estimated risk for hospitalization. That's bad for patients who catch those, but good for Washington: the Evergreen State's recent COVID-19 cases have overwhelmingly involved the Delta variant. Beta variant cases were so rare, the variant had to be excluded from some analysis due to lack of samples.

The study, which was produced in collaboration with Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, the Institute for Disease Modeling, and UW Medicine Virology Lab, ultimately concludes that hospital preparedness, higher vaccination rates, and variant detection through genomic sequencing will all be key to protecting patients.

"Washington state has invested in staff in multiple areas to be able to create the data integrations needed to complete this analysis, including staff in laboratory science, bioinformatics, molecular epidemiology, and data science," the study reads. "Building a robust public health workforce as well as strong collaborations between public health and academia is critical to using genomic epidemiology to answer crucial questions about emerging SARS-CoV-2 variants."

The state continues to need all the help it can get preventing hospitalizations. As of the latest briefing from the Washington State Hospital Association, there were 1124 people hospitalized with COVID-19 in Washington Monday. That's 153 fewer than last week, but still much higher than health care providers are comfortable with.

"While these numbers are decreasing, they are still very sobering," said Taya Briley, Executive Vice President of the Washington State Hospital Association. "It's a roughly 12 percent decrease in a week, but we are still amid the peak."