Cancer patients who received a COVID-19 booster vaccine were less likely to be hospitalised with the virus

Embargoed until: Publicly released: 2025-07-18 01:00

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Cancer patients were less likely to end up in hospital due to COVID-19 if they received a booster vaccine, according to a US study. Because people with cancer are especially at risk of severe COVID-19, the researchers investigated how receiving a booster vaccine before 2022 or a bivalent COVID-19 vaccine between September 2022 and August 2023 influenced COVID-19-related hospitalisations. The researchers say the original booster was 29.2% effective at reducing hospitalisations, with one hospitalisation likely prevented for every 166 people vaccinated. The bivalent booster was 29.9% effective, the researchers estimate, preventing one hospitalisation for every 451 people vaccinated.

Media release

From: JAMA

About The Study: In this retrospective cohort study, COVID-19 booster vaccinations were associated with significant protection against severe COVID-19, with a favorable number needed to vaccinate among persons with cancer. However, uptake of COVID-19 vaccine boosters was low, and interventions are therefore justified to increase COVID-19 vaccine uptake in this high-risk population.

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Journal/
conference: JAMA Oncology

Research:Paper

Organisation/s: Kaiser Permanente Northern California, USA

Funder: This work was supported by the NCI Serological Sciences Network (U01CA260584 to Drs Skarbinski and Kushi; U01CA260513 to Dr Zidar; 2UG1CA189850-09S1 to Drs Ziemba and Crawford and Ms Schleicher; 3U54CA260591-02S3 to Dr Figueiredo), the Physician Researcher Program of The Permanente Medical Group Delivery Science and Applied Research Program (Dr Skarbinski), and the US Veterans Health Administration (COVID19-8900-05 to Dr Zidar).

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