Effectiveness of autumn 2023 COVID-19 vaccination and residual protection of prior doses against hospitalisation in England, estimated using a test-negative case-control study

Introduction

The last COVID-19 vaccine offered to all adults in England became available from November 2021. The most recent booster programme commenced in September 2023. Bivalent BA.4–5 or monovalent XBB.1.5 boosters were given. During the study period, the JN.1 variant became dominant in England.

Methods

Vaccine effectiveness against hospitalisation was estimated throughout using the test-negative case-control study design where positive PCR tests from hospitalised individuals are cases and comparable negative PCR tests are controls. Multivariable logistic regression was used to assess vaccine effectiveness against hospitalisation with the test result as the outcome, vaccination status as the primary exposure variable of interest and confounder adjustment.

Results

There was no evidence of residual protection for boosters given as part of previous campaigns. There were 28,916 eligible tests included to estimate the effectiveness of the autumn 2023 boosters in those aged 65 years and older. VE peaked at 50.6% (95% CI: 44.2–56.3%) after 2–4 weeks, followed by waning to 13.6% (95% CI: −11.7 to 33.2%). Estimates were generally higher for the XBB.1.5 booster than the BA.4–5 booster, but this difference was not statistically significant. Point estimates were highest against XBB sub-lineages. Effectiveness was lower against both JN.1 and EG.5.1 variants with confidence intervals non-overlapping with the effectiveness of the XBB sub-lineages at 2–4 weeks for EG.5.1 where VE was 44.5% (95% CI: 20.2–61.4%) and at 5–9 weeks for JN.1 where VE was 26.4% (95%CI: −3.4 to 47.6%).

Conclusions

The recent monovalent XBB.1.5 and bivalent BA.4–5 boosters provided comparable and good protection against hospitalisation, however there was evidence of lower VE against hospitalisation of these boosters against JN.1.