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The latest on the Pfizer vaccine…

Brian Leiter

…from Statnews.  Between Pfizer and Moderna's vaccine, it looks like about 6-7% of the U.S. population may get vaccinated before the end of the year, which is better than nothing of course.  Hopefully by summer, it will be possible to vaccinate most of the population that wants it (states can mandate vaccinations, and hopefully some will, with exceptions only for health reasons).

Still to be determined, of course, is how long the protective effect of the vaccine lasts.  Does anyone know of any preliminary data or informed estimates?

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2 responses to “The latest on the Pfizer vaccine…”

  1. ACE

    Some encouraging news in the NYT: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/17/health/coronavirus-immunity.html Not sure how this extends to immunity coming from vaccine.

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  2. Kenny Easwaran

    These two Phase 3 studies seem quite promising from the public statements, but they haven't released the details of the results. They haven't stated how many of the few cases that arose in the vaccinated arm of the study occurred a week after the second shot, four weeks after the second shot, or eight weeks after the second shot, and I think there aren't many trial participants that have had more than about eight weeks since the second shot. If there is some sort of disparity in the frequency of infections at these different times, that would potentially give us some evidence as to whether the protection from the vaccine has some increase or decrease within the first few months, which might be suggestive of whether there is any decrease in protection over the course of a year.

    But without even this limited information from the trial participants, the best we have to go on is the broader information we have about whether reinfections have become more common as the pandemic has worn on, and whether antibody levels have dropped in participants in the Phase 2 studies, or in patients that have recovered. (And as mentioned by ACE, that information looks tentatively quite promising.)

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