PROPORTION of PLWH NOT VACCINATED for COVID-19 in ITALY and PREDICTORS

ABSTRACT

Background: The vaccination campaign against COVID-19 has a substantial beneficial public health impact, but vaccine hesitancy or issues to the access to vaccine could undermine the efforts made. We aim to determine the proportion of people living with HIV (PLWH) not vaccinated for COVID-19 in a cohort of PLWH in Italy and identify predictors of missing vaccination. Methods: Cross sectional study conducted in the Icona network. All PLWH of the centers participating the study with at least 1 follow-up in 2020-2021 were included. Their vaccination status for COVID-19 has been evaluated till 08Oct2021, before entering in the 3rd booster dose campaign for fragile populations in Italy. Data on vaccination status have been collected by medical records and/or administrative databases. Descriptive statistics, crude and adjusted logistic regression models for identifying predictors of not being vaccinated (0 doses received) were used. Results: Vaccination status has been assessed for 3,242 subjects from 17 centers of the cohort. 319/3,242 resulted still not vaccinated (9.8%) and 2,923 received at least one dose (90.2%). The full cycle has been completed by 2,732 subjects (85.5%). 89.1% of PLWH received a mRNA vaccine, 6.6% a viral vector and 4.3% unknown. Characteristics of patients according to being vaccinated or not are shown in Table 1A. In the adjusted logistic regressions, PLWH who did not receive the vaccine were more frequently younger (per 10 years younger AOR=1.22, 95%CI 1.07-1.38), and current/ex injecting drug users (IDU) (AOR=1.61, 95%CI 1.01-2.57), while having a current HIV-RNA < 50 copies mL (AOR=0.62, 95%CI 0.44-0.89), no previous diagnosis of COVID-19 (AOR=0.52, 95%CI 0.30-0.92) and being MSM (AOR=0.63, 95%CI 0.46-0.86) had lower risk to miss vaccination. Conclusion: The acceptance and uptake of vaccine among PLWH has been high, with a proportion of patients who completed the full vaccination cycle higher than targeted general population in Italy (85.5% vs 78.3% at W40-2021). Access to vaccination has been favourable for PLWH but some challenges remain for IDU/ex-IDU PLWH. The vaccination hesitancy lasts in younger population. MSMs seem to have a stronger attitude to protection, whereas patients with unsuppressed HIV-RNA could have a lower compliance reflected also in a lower COVID-19 vaccine uptake. Some selection bias on the population in analysis cannot be ruled out. These findings could help to develop interventions for increasing vaccination uptake for PLWH in future.