Pfizer and Moderna vaccine data from mass vaccinations

January 28, 2021 8:27 PM

Has more data derived from the mass vaccination effort been published?

The Moderna and Pfizer vaccine trials had vaccinated arms that had on the order of 20,000 people but now that we've vaccinated millions of people we should have a much larger dataset. We're monitoring vaccinated people for adverse reactions but we're probably also capturing data about vaccinated people that progress to severe covid. We should have more detailed answers to questions such as; what percentage of vaccinated people progress to severe covid, how does the vaccines' protection against severe covid evolve over time from the first shot to second shot and afterwards and so on. Does this data exist and is it being published?

posted by rdr to Health & Fitness (7 answers total)

Pfizer’s coronavirus vaccine is showing 92 percent effectiveness in Israel, according to the world’s first big controlled investigation on how it works outside of clinical tests.

Only 31 out of 163,000 Israelis vaccinated by Maccabi Healthcare Services were diagnosed with COVID-19 in their first 10 days of full-strength protection.

Maccabi found that an equivalent sample of unvaccinated Israelis was 11 times more likely to be diagnosed with the coronavirus, which allowed it to calculate the effectiveness rate.
posted by xdvesper at 8:32 PM on January 28, 2021 [2 favorites]

This data probably cannot come from the United States because of medical privacy laws (and also probably due to the haphazard distribution system). You'll only see it from other countries with organized national healthcare systems or from places in the US running formal trials where people are formally enrolled and consent to participate in the research.
posted by srboisvert at 2:28 AM on January 29, 2021

I understand from this page that the EMA is planning to do observational studies on vaccines, including effectiveness. However, I would not expect a significant amount of data very soon.
posted by scorbet at 3:07 AM on January 29, 2021

Israel is the best source of data right now; it guaranteed its vaccine supplies basically in exchange for population-level results data; and the world is benefiting from what is effectively now a massive controlled study.

So there are frequent news reports coming out of Israel about the vaccine outcomes – such as the one linked to above by xdvesper – and so far they're overwhelmingly good news. The vaccines are out there, they're really working, and people in their millions are getting protection from covid.
posted by vincebowdren at 3:43 AM on January 29, 2021 [1 favorite]

This data probably cannot come from the United States because of medical privacy laws (and also probably due to the haphazard distribution system).

I don’t think this is necessarily true. After being given the vaccine, I was told to sign up with V-safe, which asks me daily questions about how I’m feeling. It’s voluntary and not part of my medical record so I don’t see this as any different from the bajillion online surveys that ask health info. That said, I can’t remember if I signed consent for research, that day was a bit of a blur. It’s also obviously not entirely accurate, as it relies on people using it. And as far as I know it’s only going to go for a week or so.

But, we may still get some data there. Don’t know the timeline for it, though.
posted by brook horse at 6:10 AM on January 29, 2021

Response by poster: Thanks everyone for answering.

It looks like the numbers out of Israel are very good even with the B117 variant being prevalent in Israel.

Hopefully more details will be forthcoming.
posted by rdr at 11:18 PM on February 7, 2021

Response by poster: The CDC just dropped a study that I, as a not particularly well informed person, read as showing that Moderna has 90% effectiveness in the real world against infection. That’s infection, not serious illness.
posted by rdr at 2:43 PM on March 29, 2021