Risk of breakthrough infection and hospitalisation after COVID-19 primary vaccination by HIV status in four Italian regions during 2021

Background As of 2024, vaccination remains the main mitigation measure against COVID-19, but there are contradictory results on whether people living with HIV (PLWH) are less protected by vaccines than people living without HIV (PLWoH).

In this study we compared the risk of SARS-CoV-2 infection and COVID-19 hospitalisation following full vaccination in PLWH and PLWoH.

Methods We linked data from the vaccination registry, the COVID-19 surveillance system and from healthcare/pharmacological registries in four Italian regions.

We identified PLWH fully vaccinated (14 days post completion of the primary cycle) and matched them at a ratio of 1:4 with PLWoH by week of vaccine administration, age, sex, region of residence and comorbidities.

Follow-up started on January 24, 2021, and lasted for a maximum of 234 days.

We used the Kaplan-Meier estimator to calculate the cumulative incidence of infection and COVID-19 hospitalisation in both groups, and we compared risks using risk differences and ratios taking PLWoH as the reference group.

Results We matched 42,771 PLWH with 171,084 PLWoH.

The overall risk of breakthrough infection was similar in both groups with a rate ratio (RR) of 1.10 (95% confidence interval (CI):0.80–1.53).

The absolute difference between groups at the end of the study period was 8.28 events per 10,000 person-days in the PLWH group (95%CI:-18.43-40.29).

There was a non-significant increase the risk of COVID-19 hospitalisation among PLWH (RR:1.90; 95%CI:0.93–3.32) which corresponds to 6.73 hospitalisations per 10,000 individuals (95%CI: -0.57 to 14.87 per 10,000).

Conclusions Our findings suggest PLWH were not at increased risk of breakthrough SARS-CoV-2 infection or COVID-19 hospitalisation following a primary cycle of mRNA vaccination.