1. The impact of vaccination status on importation of COVID-19 among international travellers
- Author
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Robert G. Weaver, Marcello Tonelli, Paul Ronksley, Rachel Rodin, Tayler Scory, and Meaghan Lunney
- Subjects
Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) ,business.industry ,General Medicine ,Infectious and parasitic diseases ,RC109-216 ,vaccination ,Vaccination status ,covid-19 ,international travel ,Environmental health ,Medicine ,business ,case importation ,Rapid Communication - Abstract
Governments worldwide are looking for ways to safely enable international travel while mitigating the spread of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), and the associated coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). However, few data describe the impact of vaccination on importation of COVID-19. We took advantage of the sequential introduction of two government policies in Canada to evaluate the real-world evidence of vaccine effectiveness among 30,361 international travellers arriving by air in Alberta, Canada. The proportion of COVID-19-positive results for travellers who were either fully vaccinated or partially vaccinated was 0.02% (95% CI: 0.00–0.10) (i.e. one positive case among 5,817 travellers). In contrast, 1.42% (95% CI: 1.27–1.58) of unvaccinated travellers tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 (341 cases among 24,034 travellers). These findings suggest that COVID-19 vaccinations approved in Canada, substantially reduced the risk of travel-related importation of COVID-19 when combined with other public health measures. The low absolute rate of infection among fully vaccinated or partially vaccinated international travellers may inform quarantine requirements in this population.
- Published
- 2021