Study reveals true effectiveness of Covid-19 vaccines

“Vaccinated people have 9 times less risk of being hospitalized or dying from covid-19 than unvaccinated people”, epidemiologist Mahmoud Zureik, director of the Epi-Phare structure, which associates Health Insurance (Cnam) with the Medicines Agency (ANSM), in charge of writing the report.

These data, obtained from 22 million cases, confirm the conclusions of other studies carried out in Israel, the United Kingdom or the United States.

But the French report is “the most comprehensive fact in the world,” Zureik noted.

The researchers compared the situation of 11 million vaccinated people over the age of 50 with 11 million other unvaccinated people of the same age group between December 27, 2020 (date of the start of vaccinations in France) and July 20. .

Two weeks after the injection of the second dose, the scientists observed “a reduction in the risk of hospitalization of more than 90%”.

The authors of the report also analyzed the efficacy of vaccines against the delta variant, which emerged in India and is currently dominant in the world.

To do this, they used data from a single month, between June 20 and July 20.

According to this information, they observed an efficacy of 84% in those over 75 years old and 92% in those 50-74 years old.

However, “this period is too short to assess the real impact of vaccination on this variant,” Zureik acknowledged.

“The study will continue to include data for August and September,” he added.

This verification of the effectiveness of the vaccines is done as well with the injections with Pfizer / BioNtech, Moderna and AstraZeneca.

Janssen’s immune substance is the fourth approved in France, but it was injected into so few people that it was not included in the study.

“This decrease is at the same level as the risk of dying during a COVID-19 hospitalization,” said Epi-Phare.

Moreover, the efficacy on severe forms of the disease “does not seem to decrease over the period studied, of five months”.

The study is divided into two parts: one on people over 75 (7.2 million cases analyzed) and another on 50-74 years (15.4 million cases).

The vaccination campaign in France began on December 27 for the first age group and between February 19 and May 10 for the second.

The study looked at these two age groups through July 20, with similar efficacy results.

To compare hospitalization data, they matched a vaccinated person with an unvaccinated person of the same age, gender, and region.

The report only looked at the risk of developing severe forms of the coronavirus and was not interested in the possibility of becoming infected and transmitting the virus.

Other studies had already shown that the delta variant reduced the effectiveness of vaccines against the risk of contracting COVID-19.

However, avoiding severe forms is “the primary goal of public health,” Zureik said.

“An epidemic without severe forms is no longer an epidemic,” he said.