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Review of COVID-19 vaccine subtypes, efficacy and geographical distributions
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  • Published on: 17 August 2021
    Confidence Intervals and proportion of older subjects in the trials
    • oscar,m jolobe, retired geriatrician British Medical Association. Also a member, but not an affiliate, of the Manchester Medical Society

    In an otherwise excellent paper, the authors of the review of Covid-19 vaccine subtypes omitted to mention the confidence intervals of the statistics for vaccine efficacy(1). The importance of confidence intervals goes beyond .mere documentation of the possible range around the estimate.:the confidence interval also tells us about how stable the estimate is. A stable estimate is one that would be close to the stated value if the clinical trial were repeated. The same is not true of an unstable estimate.
    The authors also omitted to mention the proportion of older subjects in the respective trials. That in formation is a guide to the applicability of the trial results to the older population at large.
    The following are the answers to those questions:-
    Pfizer Vaccine
    Participants numbered 43,548 of whom 42.2% were aged >55.
    Vaccine efficacy amounted to 95%(95% Confidence Interval(CI): 90.35% to 97.6%(2).
    Moderna Vaccine:-
    Participants numbered 30,420 of whom 24.8% were aged 65 or more.
    Overall efficacy was 94.1%(95% CI, 89.3 to 96.8%)(3).
    Janssen Vaccine
    Participants numbered 39,291 of whom 33.5% were aged 60 or more.
    Overall efficacy amounted to 66.1%(95% CI 55% to 74.5%)
    AstraZeneca Vaccine
    In the subgroup who received two standard doses(the doses subsequently used in clinical practice) there were 8,895 participants. An important statistic is that 9% of the UK participants in that subgroup were...

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    Conflict of Interest:
    None declared.