In-hospital deaths due to COVID-19 between vaccinated and unvaccinated patients are the same, a Norway study finds.

The study is restricted to hospitalized patients outside the Intensive Care Units and is yet to be peer-reviewed.

Conspiracy-pseudoscience website The Daily Sceptic claims that patients hospitalized with COVID-19 have zero vaccine effectiveness against death. The claim has been attributed to a Norway study and is misleading.

The study, 'Patient trajectories among hospitalized COVID-19 patients vaccinated with an mRNA vaccine in Norway', was published in MedRexiv on November 9, 2021.

The study included 2,361 patients, including 70 (three percent) who were partially vaccinated, and 183 (eight percent) had received both jabs. The study found that patients between the age group18 and 79 years who had received both the jabs had a shorter length of stay in hospital overall and lowered chances of ICU admission. It found no difference in the length of stay for patients not admitted to ICU, nor difference of in-hospital death between vaccinated and unvaccinated patients outside ICU. The study concluded that vaccinated patients hospitalized with COVID-19 in Norway had to spend less time in the hospital and had lower chances of ICU admission than unvaccinated patients.

News Medical Life Sciences report dated November 11 also talks about the above research and states that vaccinated patients hospitalized with COVID-19 in Norway spent fewer days in the hospital. The report adds that when the analysis was restricted to "only patients not admitted to the ICU," there was no observed difference in the length of stay between fully vaccinated and unvaccinated patients. However, "fully vaccinated patients aged over the age of 80 had lower odds of in-hospital death" when including all SARS-CoV-2 positive patients.

Moreover, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention also states that getting vaccinated protects against severe illness and death from COVID-19.

Though the above report says there was no difference in the adjusted odds of deaths between hospitalized jabbed and unvaccinated patients outside the ICU, it also clearly states that those jabbed had to spend less time in the hospital and had lower chances of being moved to the ICU. Also, considering that the study is yet to be peer-reviewed, the above claim is misleading.

The COVID-19 pandemic has given rise to a lot of potentially dangerous misinformation. For reliable advice on COVID-19, including symptoms, prevention, and available treatment, please refer to the World Health Organization or your national healthcare authority.