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According to a Washington State University poll, a tiny but considerable percentage of couples have one spouse who is vaccinated against COVID-19 and another who is not. When it came to religious considerations, the reasons for not receiving the injection varied depending on which spouse in the marriage was reporting it.

The majority of the 1,300 respondents who lived with their significant others said they were in a “concordant” relationship, which means they were either both vaccinated (63.28 percent) or both unvaccinated (21.09 percent). The remaining 15.63 percent were in a “discordant” relationship, in which one spouse received the injection while the other did not.

Partners have been shown to have a lot of influence on each other’s health behaviors, said Karen Schmaling, the WSU psychologist who conducted the first known scientific study to look into this issue, detailing the results in the journal Vaccine.

As part of the survey, Schmaling asked respondents in discordant couples to rank 10 common reasons for being unvaccinated on a scale of 0 to 10 for their importance. People on both sides of the issue ranked vaccine safety as having the highest importance as a reason either they or their partners were unvaccinated, but there were significant differences in other reasons. Vaccinated people ranked the misperception that “COVID-19 isn’t real” and medical issues as more strong reasons and religious opposition as less strong reasons why their partners hadn’t gotten the shot.

Schmaling also noted several write-in answers from vaccinated people for why their significant others remained unvaccinated including “the government is overstepping its bounds” and “he’s stubborn.” Write-in answers from self-reporting unvaccinated people included “I am not afraid of COVID” and “I have natural immunity.”

The survey questioned only individuals and not both members of each couple, and Schmaling said that would be a good area for future research. She cautioned that circumstances resulting in apparent discordant behavior in this study may not indicate an actual disagreement, such as in the case where someone who would have preferred not to get vaccinated but had to for their job.

“The first thing is to try to estimate how common this is, and the next is to figure out why,” she said. “If it looks like there’s a disagreement, it would be fascinating to find out from some of these couples what their conversations have been like and how have they tried to resolve it?”

Multiple studies have found that people with kidney failure who are on dialysis have weaker antibody responses after receiving COVID-19 vaccination than the general population, but new research suggests that their immune responses are still capable of protecting them against SARS-CoV-2 infection and severe COVID-19. The findings have been published in the journal JASN.

Matthew Oliver, MD, MHS (Sunnybrook Health Science Centre, University of Toronto, Ontario Health) and colleagues analysed health records for 13,759 people who received maintenance dialysis between December 21, 2020 and June 30, 2021; 17% were unvaccinated, while 83 percent had received at least one mRNA COVID-19 vaccine dose.

The research looked at the whole population of people on maintenance dialysis in Ontario, Canada’s most populous province. Patients getting both home dialysis and in-center hemodialysis made up the diverse population.
During the research period, Dr. Oliver and his team discovered 663 SARS-CoV-2 infections, 323 hospitalizations, and 94 fatalities. Those who had received one COVID-19 vaccine dose were 41% less likely to become infected with SARS-CoV-2 and 46% less likely to develop severe COVID-19 that required hospitalisation or resulted in death, compared to those who had not been vaccinated, and those who had received two doses were 69 percent and 83 percent less likely to become infected or experience severe disease, respectively, than those who had not been vaccinated. The risk of hospitalization in the unvaccinated group was 52% and the mortality rate was 16%, whereas the risk of hospitalization in the 2-dose group was 30% and the mortality rate was 10%.

There were no significant variations in vaccination efficacy between age groups, dialysis modes, or vaccine types (Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna).

“Governments and health care providers prioritized patients on maintenance dialysis for early COVID-19 vaccination in many countries, including the U.S and Canada. This strategy was correct and important because our results show that 2 doses of an mRNA vaccine significantly protected this population, preventing many hospitalizations and deaths and reducing the burdens on patients, families, and the health care system,” said Dr. Oliver. “The effectiveness of the vaccines was less than that seen in studies in the general population but still provided substantial protection.” It is now recommended that all adults and teenagers, especially those who are immunocompromised, receive a third dose of COVID-19 vaccine to ensure an optimal immune response.