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Although previous data from clinical trials have shown the vaccine to be effective before hospitalization, a study published in the Lancet medical journal looked at the long-term efficacy of the drug under real-world conditions.
Pfizer, along with the Kaiser Permanente pharmaceutical consortium, valued 3.4 million. The Southern California population, a third of which December to 2021 were fully vaccinated against COVID-19 in August.
It was found that after an average period of 3 to 4 months, 73% of the people who were fully vaccinated had protection against infection and 90% protection against hospitalization.
However, although protection against the delta strain decreased by 40% over five months, protection against hospitalization for any strain remained very high throughout the study.
The study notes that the results are in line with preliminary data from the US and Israeli health services.
The decreased protection against infection is likely to be “primarily due to a decrease in the efficacy of the vaccine rather than the ability of the delta strain to evade the protection of the vaccine,” the study authors summarize.
“Our findings underscore the importance of long-term monitoring of vaccine efficacy and indicate that maintenance doses are likely to be required to restore the initial high level of protection seen at the beginning of the vaccination program,” the authors add.
In August, the United States approved an additional dose of the COVID-19 vaccine for immunosuppressed people and France began offering maintenance doses to the elderly population. At that point, Israel went one step further and turned on the green light for the third vaccination dose for everyone over 12 years of age. elderly.
However, a World Health Organization (WHO) report published in September claims that current vaccines are effective enough against severe COVID-19 disease, so a third dose is not needed for the general public.
Last month, the WHO called for a moratorium on maintenance doses by the end of this year to address huge inequalities in vaccine distribution between rich and poor countries.
