Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2021 Aug;27(8):1367-1369.
doi: 10.1038/s41591-021-01407-5. Epub 2021 Jun 10.

Community-level evidence for SARS-CoV-2 vaccine protection of unvaccinated individuals

Oren Milman #  1 , Idan Yelin #  1 , Noga Aharony  1 , Rachel Katz  2 , Esma Herzel  2 , Amir Ben-Tov  2   3 , Jacob Kuint  2   3 , Sivan Gazit  2 , Gabriel Chodick  2   3 , Tal Patalon  4 , Roy Kishony  5   6
Affiliations

Community-level evidence for SARS-CoV-2 vaccine protection of unvaccinated individuals

Oren Milman et al. Nat Med. 2021 Aug.

Abstract

Mass vaccination has the potential to curb the current COVID-19 pandemic by protecting individuals who have been vaccinated against the disease and possibly lowering the likelihood of transmission to individuals who have not been vaccinated. The high effectiveness of the widely administered BNT162b vaccine from Pfizer-BioNTech in preventing not only the disease but also infection with SARS-CoV-2 suggests a potential for a population-level effect, which is critical for disease eradication. However, this putative effect is difficult to observe, especially in light of highly fluctuating spatiotemporal epidemic dynamics. Here, by analyzing vaccination records and test results collected during the rapid vaccine rollout in a large population from 177 geographically defined communities, we find that the rates of vaccination in each community are associated with a substantial later decline in infections among a cohort of individuals aged under 16 years, who are unvaccinated. On average, for each 20 percentage points of individuals who are vaccinated in a given population, the positive test fraction for the unvaccinated population decreased approximately twofold. These results provide observational evidence that vaccination not only protects individuals who have been vaccinated but also provides cross-protection to unvaccinated individuals in the community.

PubMed Disclaimer

References

    1. Polack, F. P. et al. Safety and efficacy of the BNT162b2 mRNA COVID-19 vaccine. N. Engl. J. Med. 383, 2603–2615 (2020). - DOI
    1. Chodick, G. et al. The effectiveness of the first dose of BNT162b2 vaccine in reducing SARS-CoV-2 infection 13–24 days after immunization: real-world evidence. Preprint at bioRxiv https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.01.27.21250612 (2021).
    1. Dagan, N. et al. BNT162b2 mRNA COVID-19 Vaccine in a nationwide mass vaccination setting. N. Engl. J. Med. 384, 1412–1423 (2021). - DOI
    1. Yelin, I. et al. Associations of the BNT162b2 COVID-19 vaccine effectiveness with patient age and comorbidities. Preprint at bioRxiv https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.03.16.21253686 (2021).
    1. Rossman, H. et al. COVID-19 dynamics after a national immunization program in Israel. Nat. Med. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41591-021-01337-2 (2021).

Publication types

Substances

LinkOut - more resources