• Dennis Häckl, Marc Pignot, Phi Long Dang, Victoria Lauenroth, Fungwe Jah, and Clemens-Martin Wendtner.
• Universität Leipzig, Lehrstuhl für Health Economics and Management, Leipzig.
• Dtsch. Med. Wochenschr. 2024 Mar 1; 149 (7): e38e46e38-e46.

Background Patients at increased risk of inadequate immune response to COVID-19 vaccinations due to their underlying disease or therapy are potentially vulnerable to severe COVID-19 courses. The aim is to assess the population size, clinical courses and hospitalization costs of these patients in Germany.Methods This retrospective cohort study is based on extrapolations of a representative sample of statutory health insurance (SHI) claims data from 2020. Clinical COVID-19 courses, hospitalization costs and durations are compared between the insured group at increased risk for inadequate immune response to COVID-19 vaccinations (risk group) and the insured group without this risk.Results There are approximately 1.82 million SHI-insured individuals in the risk group, of whom an estimated 240 000 insured individuals do not develop a humoral immune response after 3 COVID-19 vaccinations. The risk group shows higher proportions with COVID-19 (relative risk [RR] 1.21; 95 % confidence interval [95 % CI] 1.20-1.23), hospitalizations for COVID-19 (RR 3.40; 95 % CI 3.33-3.48), hospitalizations for COVID-19 with intensive care treatment (RR 1.36; 95 % CI 1.30-1.42), and mortality (RR 5.14; 95 % CI 4.97-5.33) compared with the group without risk. In addition, hospitalizations in the risk group are on average 18 % longer (15.36 days vs. 13.00 days) and 19 % more expensive (12 371 € vs. 10 410 €). Expected hospitalization costs in the risk group are four times greater than in the group without risk (4115 € vs. 1017 €).Conclusions The risk group is vulnerable to COVID-19 and requires additional resources in the German hospital sector. This results in a need for further protective measures. Further studies are needed to evaluate the impact of different viral variants, active and passive immunizations, and therapies on clinical COVID-19 courses and their costs.The Author(s). This is an open access article published by Thieme under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonDerivative-NonCommercial License, permitting copying and reproduction so long as the original work is given appropriate credit. Contents may not be used for commecial purposes, or adapted, remixed, transformed or built upon. (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).

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