In addition to drug maker Pfizer’s announcement last week that their COVID vaccine is a 90-percent effective, on Monday, Moderna released news that their vaccine has a 95 percent effectiveness rate.
Associate Professor at Tulane’s School of Medicine Dr. Lisa Morici said the FDA indicated that the benchmark for success would be a 50-percent efficacy rate for vaccination in stage three clinical trials.
“So, the fact that both vaccines appear to be eliciting 90-percent protective effective efficacy in vaccinated individuals is very encouraging indeed,” said Morici.
Morici said she’s cautiously optimistic as we are still waiting on safety and efficacy rates from a larger number of clinical trial participants, so far data that’s been submitted is from approximately 100 participants that have been assessed.
“I think in the next month or two we’ll know a lot more about the safety and efficacy of these vaccines but certainly very encouraging,” said Morici.
Morici said at this time we don’t know if the vaccine prevents transmission of the virus once you’ve been vaccinated.
“In other words do they eliminate carriage of the virus, and actually prevent people from not only getting sick but also from harboring the virus and transmitted the virus to say someone who hasn’t been vaccinated,” said Morici.
Morici said they hope that the vaccine will remain effective for six months, a year or greater, but until time has passed the data is not yet available.
Comments