Although people with cancer generally do not have the typical strong immune response to COVID-19 vaccines, they still benefit from the shots, according to new data.

Researchers in the US Veterans Affairs healthcare system compared 29,152 vaccinated patients with cancer to the same number of similar patients who were unvaccinated. Immunisation with both doses of an mRNA vaccine from Moderna or Pfizer/BioNTech was associated with lower infection rates, especially in patients who were not currently receiving systemic therapy and in those receiving hormonal drugs such as AstraZeneca’s Faslodex (fulvestrant) or Johnson & Johnson’s Erleada (apalutamide), the researchers reported on Thursday in JAMA Oncology.

Starting 14 days after the second dose, the efficacy of the vaccines was 58 per cent overall, 76 per cent in patients receiving hormone therapy, and 85 per cent in those who had not received systemic therapy – including chemotherapy and immunotherapy drugs – for at least six months. While there were few COVID-19 deaths overall, the number was lower in the vaccinated group.

“Our study is the first… to demonstrate vaccine effectiveness against SARS-CoV-2 infection in patients with cancer,” researchers said.