LAUSR

INTRODUCTION The development of COVID-19 vaccines was the turning point of the ongoing pandemic. The Aim of this study is to describe the course of vaccination programme in Poland and effectiveness of BNT162b2 vaccine. OBJECTIVE The aim of study was to analyze vaccination rates and effectiveness stratified by age groups in Poland. PATIENTS AND METHODS This is a retrospective study based on the data on vaccination rate and survival status among Polish citizens obtained from registries kept by the Polish Ministry of Health, the Statistics Poland and the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control. The data were collected between week 53 of 2020 and week 3 of 2022. The final analysis included patients who were either not vaccinated at all or fully vaccinated with the BNT162b2 vaccine. RESULTS The database contained records of 36,362,777 individuals among whom 14,441,506 (39.71%) were fully vaccinated with the BNT162b2 vaccine and 14,220,548 (39.11%) were not vaccinated at all. The weekly average effectiveness of BNT162b2 vaccine on preventing death was 92.62% and varied from 89.08% for ≥80 year olds to 100% for individuals at 5-17 years of age. The mortality rate was significantly higher in unvaccinated group compared to the fully vaccinated group in the entire cohort (447.9 per 100 000 vs. 43.76 per 100 000, P<0.001) in all age categories. CONCLUSIONS Results of the study confirm high effectiveness of BNT162b2 vaccine in preventing COVID-19 deaths in all analyzed age groups.