What Doctors Want Patients to Know About the Effectiveness of the COVID-19 Vaccine

As the COVID-19 pandemic enters its second year, Omicron BA.5 subvariant Cases continue to rise in the United States, including among vaccinated people. But that doesn’t mean he doesn’t have COVID-19 vaccines or boosters. Such apparent juxtaposition causes confusion among many patients. A physician vaccine researcher has tried to clear the air on how effective the COVID-19 vaccine is.

The SARS-CoV-2 vaccine, manufactured by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna, became the first two COVID-19 vaccines licensed in the United States. Both vaccines have been shown to be safe and effective against SARS-CoV-2 infection or severe COVID-19 outcomes such as hospitalization and death.

of the AMAs What doctors want their patients to knowThe ™ series provides physicians with a platform to share what they want their patients to understand about today’s healthcare headlines, especially throughout the COVID-19 pandemic.

In this article, AMA member Purvi Parikh, MD, an allergist, immunologist, and vaccine researcher in New York City, takes the time to educate patients about the effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines and boosters. We talked about what to do.

“There are several things we look for when it comes to vaccines. The most important thing for vaccine efficacy is, of course, to prevent the most serious complications,” said Dr. Parikh. “This includes death, hospitalization, and the many long-term complications that can arise from certain infections, even if they are not hospitalized.

“So maybe long covid, for example, or blood clots, breathing problems, and post-mortem lung damage. We have a complete list of them,” she added, “and they are some of the most important efficacy endpoints.”

For example, if a vaccine is 80% effective, that doesn’t mean you have a 20% chance of getting the disease, Dr. Parikh explained. “It depends on what the clinical endpoint is (i.e., symptomatic infection vs. death vs. hospitalization), but usually we are looking at symptomatic infection, so 80% of people will not get infected and probably have more serious disease. You have prevented a serious outcome.”

Additionally, “percentages of effectiveness change all the time from very controlled settings where there are only 30,000 or 40,000 people,” she said. “And with billions of people receiving it now, that number is very different from when the trial began.”

Moreover, “many vaccines have been studied, Delta variants and BA.2 Omicron Subspecies And now it’s BA.5, so that should be factored in as well,” she said.

Vaccine efficacy is a measure of how well vaccination protects people from infectious disease, symptomatic illness, hospitalization, and death. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, it is usually measured through observational studies specifically designed to estimate an individual’s protection from vaccination under “real world” conditions.

“Vaccines start protecting you within weeks of being immunized, but the greatest benefit is after the population has been vaccinated for many years. herd immunity Everyone is talking about places where there is very little actual infection per se,” Dr Parikh said. “There’s a lot of talk about herd immunity and things like that. We’ve seen examples of this with polio and measles.

“But the fact is, in history, not a single infectious disease has reached that state without a vaccine,” she added.

“Most of the early studies looked not only at antibody levels, but also other parts of the immune system, such as T cells, to make sure they recognize and protect the virus itself,” Dr. Parikh said. I’m here. “Some would argue it’s even more important, because no one’s talking about T cells, but they’re helping people get critically ill and away from hospitals and intensive care units.” It’s because he’s a T cell that’s preventing it.”

“The other side of that is the actual symptoms. So another way we look at it is how symptomatic infections are avoided,” she said. Someone might not even know they’re positive because it’s a bit harder to track, especially if you don’t have symptoms.”

“In the first series, then COVID-19 Vaccine BoosterPeople have mainly focused on antibody titers,” said Dr. Parikh, adding, “There was a lot of misunderstanding in the media, even in the medical community, that it wasn’t antibody titers, so it’s the wrong way to look at it. It is effective because the antibody titers are reduced or not neutralized with the new variant.”

“However We have data and research This shows that even with boosters protecting against the most severe consequences, T cells are still very resilient. When I say that, I really don’t agree.”

“It’s all about reducing risk. If you’re a high-risk person, they are still very effectiveespecially against the most serious diseases,” said Dr. Parikh.

When individuals tested positive for COVID-19 even after being vaccinated and boosted, many jumped to the conclusion that vaccines and boosters were ineffective, but they Dr. Parikh said he overlooked the point that there was likely a case. Before a vaccine was available, people who had been hospitalized with COVID-19 may have needed remdesivir and oxygen.

Unfortunately, they were infected before they were vaccinated, so it was a completely different story, she added. Prescribed paxlovid Every day, if not multiple times a day. ”

This indicates that these patients were protected to some extent by vaccination or booster doses and could be treated as outpatients instead of being hospitalized.

“It’s not that sweet. Even people recovering at home are suffering from extreme fatigue after a few weeks, and healthier, younger people still have a lot of problems.” I don’t want to know what would have happened if I hadn’t had it.”

“It’s important that more variant-specific vaccines are being investigated because the efficacy against BA.5 is different than what’s to come,” said Dr. Parikh. “These vaccines also need to evolve as the subspecies evolve.”

As such, it has been approved by the Food and Drug Administration and recommended for use by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Bivalent COVID-19 vaccinehalf the original strain, half Omicron BA.4 and BA5.

“This is the future of COVID-19 vaccines, and we will use different ones as variants evolve.”

“Understanding and researching the efficacy of COVID-19 vaccines and boosters will continue no matter how long it takes,” said Dr. Parikh. “We will not stop tracking infectious diseases as polio and measles recur.”

“When a particular outbreak occurs, it’s not completed and forgotten. It’s always being studied,” she said. “The media don’t share it, but it’s always there in the background.”

Even with highly effective vaccines, infection is still possible breakthrough infection to occur. The idea is to prevent “severe illness and keep people out of hospitals and long-term complications that may arise,” Dr. Parikh said.

“Yale University is currently studying it and if a vaccine long covid, so many people are struggling,” she said. “This will be the next big public health emergency because far more people are living with its effects than have died.”

“The efficacy of COVID-19 vaccines like Pfizer and Moderna should not be compared until there is a large blinded controlled study that actually compares them head-to-head in the same study,” Dr. Parikh said. “It’s not apples to apples. These are all independent studies, so they’re not correlated in the same way that you say this is better than it.”

“The important thing is that if they all show to prevent these bad consequences and prevent infection, you should get whichever one you can get first unless it turns out that you’re not doing it. ‘ she said.