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
. 2022 Aug 26:13:945930.
doi: 10.3389/fimmu.2022.945930. eCollection 2022.

A comprehensive analysis of the efficacy and effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines

Xiaofeng He  1   2 , Jiao Su  3 , Yu'nan Ma  1 , Wenping Zhang  4 , Shixing Tang  1   5
Affiliations

A comprehensive analysis of the efficacy and effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines

Xiaofeng He et al. Front Immunol. .

Abstract

It is urgently needed to update the comprehensive analysis about the efficacy or effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines especially during the COVID-19 pandemic caused by SARS-CoV-2 Delta and Omicron variants. In general, the current COVID-19 vaccines showed a cumulative efficacy of 66.4%, 79.7%, and 93.6% to prevent SARS-CoV-2 infection, symptomatic COVID-19, and severe COVID-19, respectively, but could not prevent the asymptomatic infection of SARS-CoV-2. Furthermore, the current COVID-19 vaccines could effectively prevent COVID-19 caused by the Delta variant although the incidence of breakthrough infection of the SARS-CoV-2 Delta variant increased when the intervals post full vaccination extended, suggesting the waning effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines. In addition, one-dose booster immunization showed an effectiveness of 74.5% to prevent COVID-19 caused by the Delta variant. However, current COVID-19 vaccines could not prevent the infection of Omicron sub-lineage BA.1.1.529 and had about 50% effectiveness to prevent COVID-19 caused by Omicron sub-lineage BA.1.1.529. Furthermore, the effectiveness was 87.6% and 90.1% to prevent severe COVID-19 and COVID-19-related death caused by Omicron sub-lineage BA.2, respectively, while one-dose booster immunization could enhance the effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines to prevent the infection and COVID-19 caused by Omicron sub-lineage BA.1.1.529 and sub-lineage BA.2. Two-dose booster immunization showed an increased effectiveness of 81.8% against severe COVID-19 caused by the Omicron sub-lineage BA.1.1.529 variant compared with one-dose booster immunization. The effectiveness of the booster immunization with RNA-based vaccine BNT162b2 or mRNA-1273 was over 75% against severe COVID-19 more than 17 weeks after booster immunization whereas the heterogenous booster immunization showed better effectiveness than homologous booster immunization. In summary, the current COVID-19 vaccines could effectively protect COVID-19 caused by Delta and Omicron variants but was less effective against Omicron variant infection. One-dose booster immunization could enhance protection capability, and two-dose booster immunization could provide additional protection against severe COVID-19.

Keywords: COVID-19; breakthrough infection; effectiveness; efficacy; vaccine.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
The Flow chart of literature search in the present study.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Forest plot of the efficacy of COVID-19 vaccines against SARS-CoV-2 infection in overall and different vaccine types analyses.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Forest plot of the efficacy of COVID-19 vaccines against symptomatic COVID-19 disease in overall and different vaccine types analyses.
Figure 4
Figure 4
Forest plot of the efficacy of COVID-19 vaccines against severe COVID-19 disease in overall and different vaccine types analyses.
Figure 5
Figure 5
Forest plot of the efficacy of COVID-19 vaccines against asymptomatic SARS-CoV-2 infection in overall and vaccine types analyses.
Figure 6
Figure 6
The Duval and Tweedie nonparametric "trim and fill" method's funnel plot on the efficacy of COVID-19 vaccines to prevent symptomatic COVID-19 illness based on RCT studies.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

Similar articles

See all similar articles

Cited by

See all "Cited by" articles

References

    1. Hu B, Guo H, Zhou P, Shi ZL. Characteristics of SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19. Nat Rev Microbiol (2021) 19:141–54. doi: 10.1038/s41579-020-00459-7 - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. WHO . Draft landscape and tracker of COVID-19 candidate vaccines. World Health Organization; (2022). Available at: https://www.who.int/publications/m/item/draft-landscape-of-covid-19-cand....
    1. WHO . WHO coronavirus (COVID-19) dashboard. World Health Organization; (2022). Available at: https://covid19.who.int/table.
    1. WHO . Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) SARS-CoV-2-variants. World Health Organization; (2022). Available at: https://www.who.int/en/activities/tracking-SARS-CoV-2-variants/.
    1. Dobrynin D, Polishchuk I, Portal L, Zlotver I, Sosnik A, Pokroy B. Adsorption of SARS CoV-2 spike proteins on various functionalized surfaces correlates with the high transmissibility of delta and omicron variants. Mater Today Bio (2022) 14:100265. doi: 10.1016/j.mtbio.2022.100265 - DOI - PMC - PubMed

Supplementary concepts