A study reveals the true efficacy of vaccines against Covid-19

“Vaccinated people are 9 times less likely to be hospitalized or die from covid-19 than non-vaccinated people,” epidemiologist Mahmoud Zureik, director of the Epi-Phare structure, which associates Assurance maladie (Cnam ) with the Medicines Agency (ANSM), in charge of preparing the report.

These data, obtained from 22 million cases, confirm the conclusions of other studies carried out in Israel, the United Kingdom or the United States.

But the French report is “the most comprehensive fact in the world,” Zureik noted.

The researchers compared the situation of 11 million vaccinated people over 50 years of age with another 11 million unvaccinated people of the same age group between December 27, 2020 (when vaccinations began in France) and July 20. .

Two weeks after injecting the second dose, the scientists observed “a decreased risk of hospital admission of more than 90%.”

The authors of the report also analyzed the efficacy of vaccines with respect to the delta variant, which emerged in India and is currently dominant in the world.

To do this, they used data from just one month, between June 20 and July 20.

According to this information, they observed an efficacy of 84% among those over 75 years of age and 92% among those 50-74 years of age.

However, “this period is too short to assess the real impact of vaccination on this variant,” Zureik acknowledged.

“The study will continue to include data for August and September,” he added.

This verification of the efficacy of the vaccines occurs both with the injections with Pfizer / BioNtech, Moderna and AstraZeneca.

Janssen’s immunizing substance is the fourth licensed in France, but it was injected into so few people that it was not included in the study.

“This decrease is on the same level as the risk of dying during a COVID-19 hospitalization,” Epi-Phare said.

Furthermore, the efficacy on severe forms of the disease “does not appear to decrease over the period studied, five months.”

The study is divided into two parts: one on people over 75 years of age (7.2 million cases analyzed) and another on 50-74 years (15.4 million cases).

The vaccination campaign in France began on December 27 for the first age group and between February 19 and May 10 for the second.

The study looked at these two age ranges through July 20, with similar efficacy results.

To compare hospitalization data, they matched a vaccinated person with an unvaccinated person of the same age, gender, and from the same region.

The report only analyzed the risk of developing severe forms of the coronavirus and was not interested in the possibility of becoming infected and transmitting the virus.

Other studies had already shown that the delta variant reduced the effectiveness of vaccines against the risk of contracting COVID-19.

However, avoiding serious forms is “the main objective of public health,” Zureik said.

“An epidemic without serious forms is no longer an epidemic,” he said.

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