COVID symptoms, testing, shielding impact on patient‐reported outcomes and early vaccine responses in individuals with multiple myeloma.

All patients who had had a previous infection had a robust antibody response to the first dose of COVID-19 vaccine and 60% of patients had an optimal immune response to the first dose of COVID-19 vaccination. COVID symptoms, testing, shielding impact on patient-reported outcomes and early vaccine responses in individuals with multiple myeloma Keywords: myeloma; COVID-19; vaccination; wellbeing; shielding EN myeloma COVID-19 vaccination wellbeing shielding 95 98 4 12/27/21 20220101 NES 220101 Patients with myeloma have been shielded and self-isolated since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, due to the concern for and subsequent reports of higher risk of severe COVID-19 disease and mortality.1 In addition, guidelines have encouraged attenuation of myeloma therapeutics or a switch to oral therapies, ostensibly to reduce hospital foot-fall, facilitate shielding and potentially to limit further treatment-related immune suppression.2 Myeloma requires ongoing immune-suppressive chemotherapy, frequent medical visits and has previously demonstrated universally poor response to vaccinations.3 The protective titre of antibodies required to prevent re-infection is unclear, as is the ability to protect patients from SARS-CoV-2 virus variants of concern (VoC). [Extracted from the article]