Real-world data is offering hope that mRNA vaccines will be highly effective in limiting infection and presumably coronavirus transmission, in addition to its already known ability to prevent covid-19 symptoms. The findings, based on research from Israel and elsewhere, are good news to contain the pandemic sooner or later.
A study Published at the Lancet last week he examined health professionals at Israel’s Sheba Medical Center. The study compared covid-19 rates – with or without symptoms – among workers who received the Pfizer / BioNTech vaccine or not. As other research has shown, people were significantly less likely to contract covid-19 after receiving the first of two scheduled doses.
Two to three weeks after the first dose, the risk of having symptomatic covid-19 was reduced by 85%. It is important to note that the risk of covid-19 in general, including asymptomatic infection, when a person has the virus but does not feel bad, it has also been reduced by 75% over the same period, based on regular CRP tests. This is crucial, because even people with silent infections can still transmit the virus to someone else. But if a vaccine is preventing people from getting sick and carrying a sufficient amount of the virus for a positive test, this means that it is also reducing the risk of transmitting the virus from one vaccinated person to others.
The results of another recent study, not yet published, appear to show an even greater advantage for people who are fully vaccinated in Israel. Based on data analyzed by the Israeli Ministry of Health, Reuters reported last Thursday, the risk of infection was reduced by 89% in people who received two doses of the Pfizer / BioNTech vaccine.
In the USA, a preliminary study released last week, by researchers at the Mayo Clinic, points out similar benefits for the modern vaccine. They examined employees at the Mayo Clinic and associated health centers who had received the first dose of an mRNA vaccine at least 36 days earlier. Compared to their unvaccinated colleagues, workers were 89% less likely to test positive for covid-19 after receiving both doses.
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Many experts have been cautious in saying that covid-19 vaccines will reduce transmission, arguing that the data were simply not available to be sure. But other experts have argued that it would be very unusual for a vaccine effective in preventing diseases to have no effect in reducing transmission and that it is not useful to make people worried about an unlikely outcome. In any case, evidence of these and other studies it should be comforting for everyone.
More research will continue to be done to understand how effective mRNA vaccines are in preventing transmission. Other vaccines are based on different technologies and some are less effective than mRNA vaccines in preventing diseases, so they also need to be studied closely. And the spread of new variants of the coronavirus can complicate things, since at least some vaccines have been shown to be less effective against certain variants.
That said, this is undoubtedly good news if you hope to end the pandemic as soon as possible. Vaccines that prevent the disease and the transmission of covid-19 will only hinder the spread of the coronavirus as more people are vaccinated, and should accelerate the time it will take for life to return to some appearance of normality.