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A new study found that a third dose of the Pfizer coronavirus vaccine drastically reduces the risk of infection and serious illness for older adults.
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A team of researchers in Israel published the findings Wednesday in The New England Journal of Medicine.
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However, one expert urged caution when interpreting the findings and said the study has major limitations.
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A massive study published Wednesday found Wednesday that older adults in Israel who received a Pfizer coronavirus booster vaccine were much less likely to become infected or develop serious illnesses.
Including more than 1.1 million people over the age of 60, the study examined thousands of infections and hundreds of cases of serious illness, providing some of the most compelling evidence to date on the value of booster shots.
Israel began offering booster doses to its larger population on July 30, and a group of researchers analyzed national health records during the month of August.
Israeli study shows boosters reduce risk of infection and severe COVID-19 cases
The main finding was that the older population, when increased, was 11 times less likely to become infected and 19.5 times less likely to suffer from serious illness compared to similar people who had received two doses but did not receive a shot. of reinforcement.
The study is likely to be influential, as its publication comes just two days before the Food and Drug Administration convenes a group of independent experts to discuss Pfizer’s request for reinforcements. in the US. Israeli health officials are due to present the results of their reinforcement campaign at this Friday’s meeting, and U.S. health officials have pointed to Israel’s experience in reinforcing its argument for reinforcement traits.
The Biden administration has already said it plans to begin offering booster shots to the general public on Sept. 20, depending on the FDA’s OK and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
In the Israeli study, the group that did not get boosters recorded 4,439 infections and 294 serious illnesses. The reinforcement group had 934 infections and 29 severe cases. Risk reduction rates took into account the fact that the two groups were not even of size, as over time more people joined the reinforcement group.
Data should be viewed with caution
The result that booster shots reduced the risk of disease nearly 20 times is staggering and should be viewed with some skepticism, said Ellie Murray, an epidemiologist at Boston University.
The study has major limitations, he said. Above all, the researchers observed the real world instead of testing a reinforcement under more controlled conditions. This means that there can be many factors that can distort the results.
As an example, the group of people who are first in line to increase may be more cautious with other virus prevention methods, such as masking or social distancing. Instead, they may be less likely to become infected.
In addition, the study has a very limited follow-up time and does not show how long the protection against reinforcers can last. This is an essential question to know if it is worth launching a reinforcement campaign.
The limited duration of the study may distort your results. Investigators began counting cases for the reinforcement group only when 12 days were withdrawn from the third dose.
It can take up to a month on average for a person to go from exposed to infected to seriously ill, Murray said. Therefore, the study may not include enough follow-up time to show the true effect of the promoters.
There are no high quality studies on booster shots
“I’m not clear that there is a follow-up time close enough, even for early adopters,” Murray said.
“All of these issues together make it very difficult to know how much we can rely on this number coming out of the studio,” Murray added.
The broader challenge is that there is no high-quality data that provides better answers to these questions. Leading vaccine developers are not conducting controlled, randomized trials to test booster doses against a placebo and see which is the best group in the long run. In contrast, drug manufacturers have conducted small studies, raising a few hundred people and finding a high immune response, which may suggest but not demonstrate better protection, especially against serious diseases.
Israeli researchers tried to account for a number of possible confounding factors, including demographic differences between Israel’s driven and non-driven populations. They analyzed the data with several techniques that produced slightly different figures, but with the same overall result: a massive reduction in the risk of infection, between 10 and 13 times lower for the increased population, according to the analysis performed.
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