Impact of COVID-19 Vaccination Program on Seroprevalence in Blood Donors in England, 2021

Abstract

The COVID-19 vaccination programme commenced in the UK on 8th December 2020 primarily based on age; by 24 February 2021 approximately 93% of the English population aged 70-79 years had received at least 1 dose of either the Pfizer BioNTech or AstraZeneca vaccines. Using a nucleoprotein assay that detects antibodies following natural infection only and a spike assay that detects both infection and vaccine-induced responses, we aim to describe the impact of vaccination on SARS-CoV-2 antibody prevalence in English blood donors.

Note: Funding Statement: Funding was provided through Public Health England.

Declaration of Interests: EL reports the Public Health England Vaccine Evaluation Unit performs contract research on behalf of GSK, Sanofi and Pfizer which is outside the submitted work. HW, SE, IH, SR, KB, GA, EC, AL, CT, CC, IH, SR, JH, CR, AO, TB, MR report no conflicts of interest.

Ethics Approval Statement: PHE has legal permission, provided by Regulation 3 of The Health Service (Control of Patient Information) Regulations 2002, to process patient information for national surveillance of communicable diseases. Specific ethical approval was not required for this surveillance work.

Keywords: COVID-19, blood donor, serological survey

JEL Classification: I18