No, more vaccinated people did not die from COVID in Pfizer’s vaccine trial

Have you ever seen a popular tweet claiming that Pfizer is hiding that “evidence”? COVID vaccine Would you like to protect you from dying from illness? If you have and are worried, don’t. Tweets are popular, but not accurate. Here is the fact:

Claim: Pfizer’s own data show that the COVID-19 vaccine does not reduce the risk of dying from illness, as 14 people in Pfizer’s placebo group died and 15 in the vaccination group also died.

Fact: These numbers are irrelevant to vaccine efficacy as they are merely an aggregate of all deaths that occurred between participants in both the placebo and vaccine groups in Pfizer’s ongoing study.

Pfizer data show that vaccines are very effective in preventing serious illness. Data from countries that have used the vaccine have broadly shown that they are also effective in preventing death from COVID-19. July 28, Pfizer Release updated data As of mid-March, the shot is 97% valid For prevention of serious illness from COVID-19 up to 6 months later.

The data also showed that the effectiveness of shots for COVID-19 symptoms declined slightly over time: peaked at 96% efficacy 2 months after shot administration and 84 6 months later. It dropped to%.

The Food and Drug Administration granted an emergency use authorization for its vaccine in December 2020 after reviewing previous data from Pfizer’s ongoing study, which included 44,000 participants. The newly released data includes the 6-month follow-up data required to obtain full FDA approval.

Long-term studies predict that some participants will die for unrelated reasons. In clinical trials, death is monitored and potential danger signals are monitored.

According to a Pfizer study, 14 people in the placebo group and 15 people in the vaccination group died before January 2021. Most of the deaths were unrelated to COVID-19.

According to additional Pfizer data obtained by the Associated Press, only two people in the placebo group died of COVID-19 and one of the vaccinated groups died of COVID-19 pneumonia. The remaining deaths were due to other factors such as heart disease and heart attack.

The report states that none of the deaths were related to the vaccine.

Widely shared tweets misrepresent the importance of deaths and falsely suggest that Pfizer’s vaccine does not reduce the likelihood of viral death. Reduces the overall risk of death. zero. Fifteen vaccinated patients died. Fourteen people who received the placebo died, “said the tweet. However, these deaths, including all studies that died before January 2021, have nothing to do with the question of how effective the vaccine is in preventing COVID-19 deaths.

The allegations made in the Twitter post “cannot be supported by these data,” said Dr. David J. Senimo, an infectious disease expert at Rutgers University of New Jersey Medical School.

The fact that both the vaccinated and control groups had the same number of deaths from causes other than COVID-19 is expected, Cennimo said. “To exaggerate the learning example, the Pfizer vaccine does not protect you from lightning strikes, so the same number of people in the vaccine and placebo controls should be hit by lightning strikes,” Cennimo said.

In fact, Senimo said the tweet’s claim that Pfizer’s work aimed at measuring its effectiveness against death was also wrong. Rather, this study was designed to find out how effective the vaccine is in protecting against symptomatic illnesses.

Death from COVID-19 is a much rarer event than COVID-19 infection, so Cennimo said a much larger study sample was needed to answer that question.

Real-world data on hundreds of millions of Pfizer vaccines administered in the United States, United Kingdom and Israel Vaccines are very effective To protect yourself from death.

A Pfizer spokesperson told AP that the company could not comment on certain cases, but “vaccine or placebo-related deaths were not considered by investigators.”