Will the confirmation of the extent of the effectiveness of vaccination in France succeed in weakening the last square of the undecided? “Vaccinated people aged 50 and over are nine times less likely to be hospitalized or die from Covid-19 than unvaccinated people”, summarize the authors of two reports published Monday, October 11 by Epi-Phare, a scientific interest group placed under the dual supervision of the National Medicines Safety Agency (ANSM) and the National Health Insurance Fund (CNAM) ).
The authors analyzed the effects of the three main vaccines that are or have been used in France, Comirnaty (Pfizer), Spikevax (Moderna) and Vaxzevria (AstraZeneca). “In real life conditions, these three vaccines show comparable and very high efficacy on a very large number of people. This, whatever the age from 50 years. In addition, this efficacy is maintained over time, without showing a drop over the four to five months of follow-up ”, summarizes Mahmoud Zureik, director of Epi-Phare and professor of epidemiology and public health at the University of Versailles-Saint-Quentin (Yvelines).
Unprecedentedly, these two analyzes were carried out on a total of 22.6 million people. These are “Epidemiological studies analyzing the effectiveness” in real life “ vaccines that target the largest number of people in the world ”, emphasizes Antoine Flahault, professor of epidemiology and director of the Institute for Global Health in Geneva. “Israeli studies on the subject included nearly 6.5 million participants, British studies 2.6 million and North American studies 3.4 million,” specifies the Swiss epidemiologist.
These two studies confirm the effectiveness of clinical trials already carried out with these three vaccines, under very controlled conditions, far from real life. Above all, they confirm data already published on the impact of prevention campaigns carried out in Israel (Haas E. et al, The Lancet, May 5, 2021), North America and the United Kingdom. In all cases, the effectiveness of the vaccines on severe forms and on deaths linked to Covid-19 was in the order of 90% to 97%.
Sophisticated but proven mathematical analyzes
“Once the clinical trials are completed, the convergence of their results with those of” observational “epidemiological studies is very important ”, considers Antoine Flahault. These two studies therefore come “To strengthen the conviction of epidemiologists of the very high efficacy of these three vaccines on severe forms”. Already in May, a first Epi-Phare study, carried out on more than four million people, had shown that people aged 75 and over, vaccinated between December 27, 2020 and February 24, had nine times less risk. to be hospitalized for Covid-19 than the unvaccinated. This first analysis, however, did not include the 50-75 age group.
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