Moderna and Pfizer’s Vaccines Stop 90% of Infections

The two main COVID-19 coronavirus vaccines — from Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna — successfully prevent 90% of infections after full vaccination, according to a new study shared on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC’s) official website.

These new results from the CDC serve as strong evidence that the primary vaccines can prevent all infections — including asymptomatic and pre-symptomatic ones — 90% of the time.

COVID-19 infections dropped by 80% after just one shot

Both Pfizer and Moderna’s vaccines blocked 90% of infections two weeks after receiving the second of two full-suite doses. After the first dose of either mRNA vaccine, recipients’ risk of COVID-19 coronavirus infection dropped sharply by 80% two or more weeks after the shot. This study involved 3,950 health care personnel, in addition to first responders and other essential workers, and required them to self-collect nasal swabs every week for PCR lab testing. This went on for 13 weeks, whether or not they developed symptoms of the COVID-19 illness.

This comes on the heels of Moderna and BioNTech announcing they’re expanding the use of technology used to develop the COVID-19 vaccine — to help advance other therapies and vaccines — namely messenger RNA, or mRNA.

The CDC said it decided to use these test groups as participants because they showed a greater likelihood of exposure to the virus because of their professions. Since they self-swabbed once per week, researchers were able to seek out evidence of coronavirus infection regardless of symptoms. And, only 10.7% of infections were asymptomatic, according to the CDC.

However, most infections happened among those whose infections were pre-diagnoses via tests before they showed symptoms or even knew they had the virus — which is the period when transmission is most likely.

This is developing news about new crucial evidence supporting the effectiveness of Pfizer and Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccines in real-world scenarios, so be sure to check-in with us for more updates.