BNT162b2 vaccine effectiveness was marginally affected by the SARS-CoV-2 beta variant in fully vaccinated individuals
Open accessAbstract
Objective To evaluate the effectiveness of the Pfizer BNT162b2 vaccine against the SARS-Cov-2 Beta variant.Study design and setting Israel's mass vaccination program, using two doses of the Pfizer BNT162b2 vaccine, successfully curtailed the Alpha variant outbreak during winter 2020-2021, However, the virus may mutate and partially evade the immune system. To monitor this, sequencing of selected positive swab samples of interest was initiated. Comparing vaccinated with unvaccinated PCR positive persons, we estimated the odds ratio for a vaccinated case to have the Beta vs. the Alpha variant, using logistic regression, controlling for important confounders.Results There were 19 cases of Beta variant (3.2%) among those vaccinated more than 14 days before the positive sample and 79 (3.4%) among the unvaccinated. The estimated odds ratio was 1.26 (95% CI: 0.65-2.46). Assuming the effectiveness against the Alpha variant to be 95%, the estimated effectiveness against the Beta variant was 94% (95% CI: 88%-98%).Conclusion Despite concerns over the Beta variant, the BNT162b2 vaccine seemed to provide substantial immunity against both the Beta and the Alpha variants. From 14 days following the second vaccine dose, the effectiveness of BNT162b2 vaccine was at most marginally affected by the Beta variant.
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Beta is a benchmark for partially reduced neutralization without major impact on effectiveness.
“Beta [as a benchmark for partially reduced neutralization (7) without major impact on effectiveness (19, 20)]”
From Neutralization of SARS-CoV-2 Omicron by BNT162b2 mRNA vaccine–elicited human sera (2022) · cites this paper as [20]
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- Authors
- Mor, O., Zuckerman, N. S., Hazan, I., Fluss, R., Ash, N., Ginish, N., Mendelson, E., Alroy-Preis, S., Freedman, L., & Huppert, A.
- Affiliations
- Tel Aviv University (IL)
- Sheba Medical Center (IL)
- Israel Ministry of Health (IL)
- Corresponding author
- Huppert, Amit
- ORCID
- Venue
- Journal of Clinical Epidemiology
- Publisher
- Elsevier BV
- Published
- 2022-02
- Volume
- 142
- Pages
- 38-44
- ISSN
- 0895-4356 (ISSN-L)
- PMC
- PMC8553421
- OpenAlex
- W3210522245
- Cited by
- 13
- References
- 23
- Citations by year
- 2024: 1 · 2023: 2 · 2022: 9 · 2021: 1
- FWCI
- 1.03
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- bronze
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- Journal of Clinical Epidemiology (publishedVersion)
- Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (publishedVersion)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Infectious Diseases › SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19 Research
- Social Sciences › Health › Vaccine Coverage and Hesitancy
- Physical Sciences › Mathematics › Modeling and Simulation › COVID-19 epidemiological studies
- Keywords
- BNT162b2, COVID-19 vaccine effectiveness, SARS-CoV-2 Alpha variant, Omicron variant, vaccine breakthrough infection, immune evasion
- MeSH terms
- COVID-19, SARS-CoV-2, Vaccine Efficacy, BNT162 Vaccine, Adult, Aged, Aged, 80 and over, Female, Humans, Israel, Male, Middle Aged, RNA, Viral, Logistic Models, Sequence Analysis, RNA, Mass Vaccination, Microbial Viability, Young Adult, High-Throughput Nucleotide Sequencing
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