ArticleEpidemiology and infection2023
Estimating the share of SARS-CoV-2-immunologically naïve individuals in Germany up to June 2022.
Article in Epidemiology and infection, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 6 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
6 citing papers in PubMed.
- Shifts in seasonal timing of respiratory diseases and causes of death following a natural pandemic event.PLOS global public health · 2026Article
- Nationwide population-based infection- and vaccine-induced SARS-CoV-2 antibody seroprevalence in Germany in autumn/winter 2021/2022.Euro surveillance : bulletin Europeen sur les maladies transmissibles = European communicable disease bulletin · 2025Article
- SARS-CoV-2 seroprevalence among people living with HIV in the German HIV-1 Seroconverter Cohort, 2020-2022.BMC infectious diseases · 2024Article
- Monitoring the SARS-CoV-2 Pandemic: Prevalence of Antibodies in a Large, Repetitive Cross-Sectional Study of Blood Donors in Germany-Results from the SeBluCo Study 2020-2022.Pathogens (Basel, Switzerland) · 2023Article
- Modeling the impact of the Omicron infection wave in Germany.Biology methods & protocols · 2023Article
- T cell immune memory after covid-19 and vaccination.BMJ medicine · 2023Review
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
9 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
After the winter of 2021/2022, the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic had reached a phase where a considerable number of people in Germany have been either infected with a severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) variant, vaccinated or both, the full extent of which was difficult to estimate, however, because infection counts suffer from under-reporting, and the overlap between the vaccinated and recovered subpopulations is unknown. Yet, reliable estimates regarding population-wide susceptibility were of considerable interest: Since both previous infection and vaccination reduce the risk of severe disease, a low share of immunologically naïve individuals lowers the probability of further severe outbreaks, given that emerging variants do not escape the acquired susceptibility reduction. Here, we estimate the share of immunologically naïve individuals by age group for each of the sixteen German federal states by integrating an infectious-disease model based on weekly incidences of SARS-CoV-2 infections in the national surveillance system and vaccine uptake, as well as assumptions regarding under-ascertainment. We estimate a median share of 5.6% of individuals in the German population have neither been in contact with vaccine nor any variant up to 31 May 2022 (quartile range [2.5%-8.5%]). For the adult population at higher risk of severe disease, this figure is reduced to 3.8% [1.6%-5.9%] for ages 18-59 and 2.1% [1.0%-3.4%] for ages 60 and above. However, estimates vary between German states mostly due to heterogeneous vaccine uptake. Excluding Omicron infections from the analysis, 16.3% [14.1%-17.9%] of the population in Germany, across all ages, are estimated to be immunologically naïve, highlighting the large impact the first two Omicron waves had until the beginning of summer in 2022. The method developed here might be useful for similar estimations in other countries or future outbreaks of other infectious diseases.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.