CDC: vaccinated could avoid quarantine 0:43
(CNN Spanish) – As more countries apply vaccines against covid-19 in their population, studies are emerging that confirm their effectiveness. In the United States, CDC research indicates that messenger RNA vaccines, namely Pfizer and Moderna, are highly effective in preventing symptomatic infection, even after the first dose.
In this episode, Dr. Huerta breaks down the study.
You can listen to this episode on Spotify or your favorite podcast platform or read the transcript below.
Hello, I am Dr. Elmer Huerta and this is your daily dose of information about the new coronavirus. Information that we hope will be useful to take care of your health and that of your family.
Now that COVID-19 vaccines are being used in the real world, studies demonstrating their effectiveness are beginning to be published, especially in Israel, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
Let us first of all remember that we must differentiate between efficacy and effectiveness of vaccines.
Difference between efficacy and effectiveness
The effectiveness of a vaccine – those numbers that we have heard from 95% from Pfizer / BioNTech or 94.5% from Moderna – is calculated in a phase 3 controlled clinical trial in which you choose what type of volunteers to participate, and the vaccine is compared against a placebo. Efficacy means that – compared to a placebo – people who received a vaccine were, for example, 95% less likely to develop the disease.
For its part, the effectiveness it is calculated by vaccinating all kinds of people in real life. It is a consequence of measuring how a vaccine works in a community vaccination program – that is, no longer in a controlled clinical trial – and the vaccinated against the unvaccinated are compared. Here, a 95% effectiveness means that – compared to the unvaccinated – vaccinated people were 95% less likely to get sick.
Undoubtedly, effectiveness studies are very important because they tell us if the vaccine works or not in the place that really matters: in the communities.
The effectiveness of Pfizer and Moderna’s covid-19 vaccine
A recent study, published May 14 in the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Bulletin of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, gives the interim results of an effectiveness study of Pfizer and Moderna vaccines made. in the United States among healthcare workers.
The study analyzed data from a group of healthcare workers from 33 hospitals in 25 US states from January to March 2021.
The majority (75%) of the health workers studied worked in intensive care units (including emergency departments).
25% worked in outpatient or specialty care clinics and less than 1% worked in long-term care centers and urgent care clinics.
In total, as of March 18, 2021, 623 healthcare workers who had been vaccinated but developed at least one covid-19 symptom and had a positive molecular PCR test after the first or second were included in the study. second dose of the vaccine.
These were the so-called patients with cases for having developed covid-19.
The results of the study
On the other hand, the so-called control participants were 1,220 healthcare workers who were also vaccinated, but who, regardless of their symptoms, had a negative molecular test as part of their follow-up. This group did not develop covid-19.
As you can see, this is a study in which both groups of healthcare workers were vaccinated, but they were differentiated by the result of their molecular test, which indicated who had gotten sick and who had not.
The results indicated that the messenger RNA vaccines from Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna are highly effective against symptomatic COVID-19 among healthcare workers.
Efficacy in preventing symptomatic infection after a single dose of these vaccines was estimated to be 82%, and 94% after two doses, results that the researchers say are consistent with results from previous clinical trials.
Undoubtedly, this study strengthens the decision to get vaccinated and protect against symptomatic disease, since no deaths occurred in vaccinated people who developed the disease.
Do you have questions about the coronavirus?
Send me your questions on Twitter, we will try to answer them in our next episodes. You can find me at @DrHuerta.
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