Quick Facts: Overview of the Effectiveness of Major COVID-19 Vaccines

Written by | Fanpu

On January 28, 2021, Novavax announced on its official website that the Phase III clinical trial of its COVID-19 protein subunit vaccine NVX-CoV2373 in the UK reached the primary endpoint, with a vaccine efficacy of 89.3%. The Phase 2b clinical trial in South Africa also showed good results, with a protection rate of 60% in HIV-negative patients (more than 90% of patients were infected with the new 501Y.V2 variant). (For details, see "Novavax announced that the subunit vaccine NVX-CoV2373 clinical trial in the UK reached the primary endpoint, with an efficacy of 89.3%)

On January 29, Johnson & Johnson announced on its official website that the new crown vaccine it developed showed complete protection against COVID-19, with a protection rate of 72% in the United States, 57% in South Africa, and 66% in Latin America.

We have compiled the effectiveness data of major COVID-19 vaccines around the world as follows:

On January 25, Israel's Maccabi Healthcare Services revealed that they surveyed 128,600 people who were fully protected by the vaccine. One week after receiving the second dose of the vaccine, only 20 people were infected with the new coronavirus, and the infection rate was as low as 0.015% (see "After 130,000 people received two doses of the vaccine, only 20 people were infected with the new coronavirus: Israel's vaccine protection effect is encouraging"), but there is still a lack of control group data to confirm this epidemic prevention effect.

Maccabi analyst Anat Ekka quickly followed up with the control group analysis. According to The Times of Israel on January 28, the control group for this analysis was composed entirely of people who had not been infected or vaccinated, with similar ages and health conditions. Zohar used a complex calculation method similar to that used in Pfizer's clinical trials to compare the vaccine group and the control group, and calculated that the actual effectiveness of the vaccine was 92%.

However, other health agencies in Israel have not yet provided control group data, which means that although the Israeli Ministry of Health released national data on January 28, it is far from enough to find out the true effectiveness of the vaccine nationwide.

In the Israeli Ministry of Health's report, there were 317 cases of COVID-19 infection among 715,425 vaccine recipients, with an infection rate of 0.044%, about twice the infection rate of Maccabi's vaccinated people. People vaccinated at Maccabi Health Services tend to have a higher socioeconomic background and live in areas with lower infection levels. Zohar said that if there was a nationwide control group for comparison, its effectiveness would not be much different from Maccabi's data.

References

1. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-55642648

2. https://www.jnj.com/johnson-johnson-announces-single-shot-janssen-covid-19-vaccine-candidate-met-primary-endpoints-in-interim-analysis-of-its-phase-3-ensemble-trial

3. http://www.myzaker.com/article/5ffe3d95b15ec04ebf6f806a/

4. http://k.sina.com.cn/article_1644648333_6207578d01900ux82.html?sudaref=www.baidu.com&display=0&retcode=0

5. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)32623-4/fulltext#%20

6. https://zhuanlan.zhihu.com/p/321241707

7. https://www.timesofisrael.com/vaccine-found-92-effective-in-israel-in-first-controlled-result-outside-trials/