[ad_1]
Over the past week, there has been a lot of back-and-forth between experts as to whether people need booster doses of Covid – but a crucial piece of the conversation is missing.
Pfizer submitted data from a real-world study in Israel to the Food and Drug Administration on Wednesday showing that a third dose of the mRNA vaccine given six months after a second injection restores protection against infection to 95 %. That sounds like a solid statistic to justify giving boosters, but it omits a key point about vaccines: they’re not meant to completely prevent infection.
Covid vaccines do exactly what they are designed to do, which is to prevent hospitalizations, serious infections and death.
This is one potential reason for the FDA’s rapid response to Pfizer’s report. “[The] The FDA has not independently reviewed or verified the underlying data or their findings, ”the agency wrote in a document released Wednesday. The FDA’s vaccine advisory committee is set to meet on September 17 to review the data and decide whether or not to approve the recall. gunshots in the United States
In its report, the FDA also noted that the Israeli study submitted by Pfizer is observational and therefore may contain biases that make the results less reliable. Studies conducted in the United States, the agency wrote, “may most accurately represent the effectiveness of the vaccine in the American population.”
Moderna also released new data on Wednesday ahead of the FDA committee meeting, saying breakthrough cases are less common in people who have recently received her vaccine, implying that its protection also wanes over time. The drugmaker’s review has yet to be peer reviewed.
New data released last Friday reinforces the fact that the vaccines are still working as expected, even amid the spread of the more contagious delta variant. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention studied more than 600,000 cases of COVID-19 from April to mid-July, when the delta became dominant, and found that unvaccinated people were about four and a half times more likely of contracting Covid, more than 10 times more likely to be hospitalized and 11 times more likely to die from the disease.
Over time, Covid vaccines may not work as well in preventing mild illness in those vaccinated, “but that’s not a sign that the vaccines are failing,” Dr Anna Durbin, director of the Center for Immunization Research at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health said in a briefing Wednesday.
This is also why a group of experts published an article on Monday in the medical journal The Lancet, claiming that Covid boosters are “not appropriate at this stage of the pandemic”.
Even if the FDA approves the use of boosters, deeming them safe and effective for doing what they’re supposed to do, it’s up to the CDC to review, officially sign and decide who should get them, Durbin said.
Register now: Get more information about your money and career with our weekly newsletter
Don’t miss:
[ad_2]
Source link