Coronavirus vaccine efficacy

Chair of the British Medical Association

24 Dec 2021 3 4

Albert Bourla

Inserted 2 years ago

“Although two doses of the vaccine may still offer protection against severe disease caused by the Omicron strain, it's clear from these preliminary data that protection is maximised with a third dose of our vaccine. Ensuring as many people as possible are fully vaccinated with the first two dose series and a booster remains the best course of action to prevent the spread of COVID-19.”

Pfizer chairman and chief executive

08 Dec 2021 6 3

Linsey Marr

Inserted 2 years ago

“Delta is obviously much more transmissible and the vaccine helps protect against that, but it's not 100 per cent. So it almost puts us back where we were a year ago with a less transmissible virus and no vaccines. At the same time, it's not as upsetting as the first time around because we know what we need to do.”

Cbc

Expert on virus transmission at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Va

28 Aug 2021 3 3

Aziz Sheikh

Inserted 3 years ago

“These results [4 weeks after the first dose Pfizer reduced risk of hospitalisation by up to 85% and Oxford-AstraZeneca by up to 94%] are very encouraging and have given us great reasons to be optimistic for the future. We now have national evidence – across an entire country – that vaccination provides protection against COVID-19 hospitalisations. Roll out of the first vaccine dose now needs to be accelerated globally to help overcome this terrible disease.”

Professor at the University of Edinburgh

22 Feb 2021 6 3

Susan Hopkins

Inserted 3 years ago

“Overall, we're seeing a really strong effect to reducing any infection, asymptomatic and symptomatic.”

Public Health England’s strategic response director

22 Feb 2021 4 3

Theresa Tam

Inserted 3 years ago

“The vaccines we have are very effective for individual protection and that's what we might expect, but you as an individual do not know whether you are completely protected or not. It is a 90 per cent vaccine effectiveness. You could be in the 10 per cent of the population that may have not taken to the vaccine. You still have to respect those public health measures. That is critical ... right now, the scientific principle underpinning the application of vaccines for international travel cannot be made ... because we do not know the vaccines reduce transmission.”

Cbc

Canada's Chief Public Health Officer

05 Feb 2021 3 2

Amesh Adalja

Inserted 3 years ago

“The end game is to stop death, to stop hospitals from going into crisis - and all of these vaccines, even including against the South African variant, seem to do that substantially.”

Infectious disease expert at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security

30 Jan 2021 4 3

Emmanuel Macron

Inserted 3 years ago

“The real problem on AstraZeneca is that it doesn’t work the way we were expecting it to. We’re waiting for the EMA [European Medicines Agency] results, but today everything points to thinking it is quasi-ineffective on people older than 65, some say those 60 years or older.”

Politico

President of France

29 Jan 2021 3 3

Anthony Fauci

Inserted 3 years ago

“We will continue to see the evolution of mutants. We will have to be nimble to adjust to make versions of the vaccine that are actually specifically directed to whatever mutations are prevalent at the time.”

Cbc

Head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases

29 Jan 2021 3 4

Robert Booy

Inserted 3 years ago

“mRNA vaccines can be quickly developed, they’re cheap, they’re effective, they appear safe, and you can adjust them by putting in a slightly different antigen if the virus changes its spots. But the overarching concern is, we’ve never used this type of vaccine before, so we have to do our darnedest to do the surveillance to check that it’s well tolerated.”

Infectious diseases and vaccine expert from the University of Sydney

08 Jan 2021 4 3

Jennifer Martin

Inserted 3 years ago

“The reason it’s such a prolonged approval process in Australia and New Zealand is because there is lots of double checking and reexamining of the statistics, because if we make an error, it will become an error on a big scale by the time the drug is rolled out across a large population. It’s not that uncommon that the regulator might look at the data and say, 'Well, it looks OK in terms of how it works in European people, but we’re quite worried about how this might affect Indigenous people, and the Asian population seem to respond differently too'. Australia and New Zealand are saying; 'Why would you put people at risk when if you wait a bit longer, you can get more information?'”

Physician in Australia who is also a member of the pharmacology and therapeutics advisory committee of Pharmac, the sole purchaser for pharmaceuticals in New Zealand

08 Jan 2021 4 3

Robert Peston

Inserted 3 years ago

“According to one of the government’s scientific advisers, the reason for Matt Hancock's 'incredible worry' about the South African COVID-19 variant is that they are not as confident the vaccines will be as effective against it as they are for the UK’s variant”

ITV political editor

04 Jan 2021 5 4

Supriya Sharma

Inserted 3 years ago

“It's a bit difficult to say exactly the day, because we're still getting, as we said, information submitted by the company. But things have been progressing really well, and we're expecting within the next week to 10 days to be making a final decision. We're expecting some information [from the drug companies] today and some information tomorrow as well, and then of course we'll be working through the weekend - as we always do - to take a look at it. I think we're saying around mid-December at the latest, but it really depends on the data. There's a group of seven to 10 reviewers that are working on all aspects of the submission - there's hundreds of thousands of pages. And their only criteria is really making sure that the science is sound and that the vaccine is safe.”

Cbc

Chief medical adviser to Health Canada's deputy minister

03 Dec 2020 4 4

Tal Zaks

Inserted 3 years ago

“We believe that we have a vaccine that is very highly efficacious. We now have the data to prove it. We expect to be playing a major part in turning around this pandemic. At this level of effectiveness, when you just do the math of what it means for the pandemic that’s raging around us, it’s just overwhelming.”

Moderna Chief Medical Officer

30 Nov 2020 4 4

Albert Bourla

Inserted 3 years ago

“Today is a great day for science and humanity. The first set of results from our phase 3 Covid-19 vaccine trial provides the initial evidence of our vaccine’s ability to prevent Covid-19. We are reaching this critical milestone in our vaccine development programme at a time when the world needs it most with infection rates setting new records, hospitals nearing over-capacity and economies struggling to reopen.”

Pfizer chairman and chief executive

09 Nov 2020 3 4

Marc Van Ranst

Inserted 3 years ago

“We don’t know if there will be a large number. I think probably not, but we will have to see. Perhaps a vaccine will need to be repeated every year, or within two or three years. It seems clear though that we won’t have something that works for, say, 10 years.”

Belgian virologist

25 Aug 2020 3 3

Anthony Fauci

Inserted 3 years ago

“We don’t know yet what the efficacy might be. We don’t know if it will be 50% or 60%. I’d like it to be 75% or more. But the chances of it being 98% effective is not great, which means you must never abandon the public health approach.”