Noteworthy COVID19 studies from the past week...

A lot to catch up on

This was quite the week for COVID19-related scientific findings. Here is my attempt to catch you up…

1. Novavax released data from their U.K. and South Africa trials. These numbers are important because they give us insight on the effectiveness against new variants. In short, Novavax works great against the old variants (efficacy=96%) and against B.1.1.7 (U.K. efficacy= 86.3%) and B.1.351 (South Africa efficacy= 48.6%). In all of the trials, there were 0 hospitalizations and 0 deaths in the vaccine group. This data has yet to be peer-reviewed.

2. Transmission

   1. Among those with at least one mRNA vaccine dose, asymptomatic disease (and thus transmission) was reduced by 72%. Among those that received two doses, asymptomatic disease (and thus transmission) was reduced by 73%

   2. Remember that leaked study from Israel? Well, Pfizer finally commented and confirmed an effectiveness of 94% against asymptomatic transmission. While I do have access to the leaked study (thanks to a YLE follower), I’m going to wait to comment until the preprint is released for general consumption. We need to respect the scientific process.

   For those counting, there are now 7 sub-studies/press releases that confirm a 50-95% reduced transmission after vaccination. This is a big range, which is typical for such drastically different scientific studies. Variability is likely due to different sample sizes, locations, vaccines, genetics, cultures, etc. It will be a while until we know the “true” percentage for each vaccine.

3. Other noteworthy studies that came out this week:

• In K-12 schools, increasing physical distancing from ≥3 feet to ≥6 feet was NOT associated with a reduction in COVID19 cases among students or staff. But this was only if other mitigation measures were implemented and enforced, like masks.

• We got confirmation from Syrian hamsters that the variant B.1.351 (first discovered in South Africa) reduces AstraZeneca neutralizing antibodies by 9.5-fold compared to B.1.1.7.

I updated our vaccine table and added a new “Transmission” row. Remember that the peach color indicates new information.

That’s it for now!

Love, YLE