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- Published on: 17 August 2021
- Published on: 17 August 2021Confidence Intervals and proportion of older subjects in the trials
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.
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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...Conflict of Interest:
None declared.