Lead Author: Shreshtha, et al.
Original date of publication: 04/19/2023
Link: https://academic.oup.com/ofid/article/10/6/ofad209/7131292
Summary Context
Landmark study at the Cleveland Clinic that reluctantly admits the following: ” [t]he risk of COVID-19 also increased with time since the most recent prior COVID-19 episode and with the number of vaccine doses previously received.” In a study that like many others claims efficacy in the first months after vaccination dose, it ends up showing a far more alarming and important trend — more shots lead to more positive test results over time– for future issues with the vaccination program.
Comments
This study is very large (51,000+ subjects), well-powered, and reasonably well-designed statistically. For that reason its surprising (to some) outcome, that more injections correlates to more positive tests over time, which alarmed many people who were not previously exposed to the idea of “negative efficacy” of this kind. Importantly, the authors also control for test-seeking behavior and show that people who test more do not overlap with people who are more likely to get the vaccine, a common response in the media about this paper to try to explain away the results. A very important study given the conflicts were largely at play to suppress this finding and yet it emerged nonetheless.
Abstract or Results, Key Passages
“The bivalent COVID-19 vaccine given to working-aged adults afforded modest protection overall against COVID-19 while the BA.4/5 lineages were the dominant circulating strains, afforded less protection when the BQ lineages were dominant, and effectiveness was not demonstrated when the XBB lineages were dominant.”
Keywords: covid vaccinationinfectionnegative efficacyvaccine efficacyworkplace transmission
Full Author List: Nabin K Shrestha , Patrick C Burke , Amy S Nowacki , James F Simon , Amanda Hagen , Steven M Gordon
