Study registration: *
Publication McKeigue P, medRxiv, 2021
Dates: 2020-12-01 to 2021-05-19
Funding: No specific funding (No specific funding was received for this study)
Conflict of interest: Yes (HC receives research support and honoraria and is a member of advisory panels or speaker bureaus for Sanofi Aventis, Regeneron, Novartis, Novo-Nordisk and Eli Lilly. HC receives or has recently received non-binding research support from AstraZeneca and Novo-Nordisk. SH received honoraria from Gilead.)

Methods

Study design:Case-control
Description of participants: Population of Scotland
Inclusion criteria:
  • Cases: Diagnosed cases (positive nucleic acid test, or a hospital admission or death with COVID-19 ICD-10 codes) with entry to critical care within 28 days of presentation or fatal outcome (death within 28 days of a positive test or any death for which COVID-19 was coded as underlying cause). Controls: ten controls matched for one-year age, sex and primary care practice and alive on the day of presentation of the case.

Exclusion criteria:
  • Previously tested positive for COVID-19

Follow-up duration (months): 5.63
Vaccines:
  • 2 doses of BNT162b2 or mRNA-1273 or ChAdOx1-S
Variant description :
Variant name: Alpha
Evidence: Indirect evidence (prevalence of variant in the population: 5 to 99%)
Documents
available

Protocol

NR

Statistical plan

NR

Data-sharing stated: Yes, Accessible now
Data accessibility: The component datasets used here are available via the Public Benefits and Privacy Panel for Health and Social Care at https://www.informationgovernance.scot.nhs.uk/pbpphsc/ for researchers who meet the criteria for access to confidential data. All source code used for derivation of variables, statistical analysis and generation of this manuscript is available on https://github.com/pmckeigue/covid-scotland_public. Corresponding author: paul.mckeigue@ed.ac.uk
General comment Concerns is over uncontrolled confounding: the estimates were not adjusted for socio-economic status, ethnicity or health-seeking behaviour.