Last year’s updated COVID-19 vaccines helped prevent severe outcomes, including hospitalizations and deaths, according to data from a large study of U.S. military veterans published on Wednesday.

Vaccinated veterans who developed COVID after receiving the 2024-2025 boosters from Moderna or Pfizer/BioNTech were also less likely to visit the emergency room for complications, compared with unvaccinated COVID patients, researchers reported in The New England Journal of Medicine.

The researchers tracked 164,132 veterans who simultaneously received a 2024-2025 COVID booster and a flu shot, and 131,839 who received only the flu vaccine.

The vast majority of participants were at least 45 years old, and virtually all who received a COVID shot got one of the two approved mRNA-based vaccines that

See Full Page