White House COVID-19 advisor Anthony Fauci downplayed on Aug. 15 a recent study from a prominent medical research center that deemed the Pfizer vaccine less effective than the Moderna vaccine.
The Mayo Clinic and Cambridge-based biotech company nference, in a study, found that both mRNA COVID-19 vaccines’ effectiveness dropped in the month of July. The researchers, while saying the vaccines provided good protection against the virus, found that Moderna’s vaccine effectiveness was 76 percent, as compared with Pfizer’s 42 percent.
“That study … is a pre-print study, it hasn’t been fully peer-reviewed,” Fauci said on CBS’s “Face the Nation” of the recent Mayo-nference study’s findings, which was published on the website medRxiv.org. The study gathered data from about 25,000 Minnesota residents from January and July.
“I don’t doubt what they’re seeing, but there are a lot of confounding variables in there, about when one was started, the relative amount of people in that cohort who were Delta versus Alpha.”
Fauci was referring to the Delta and Alpha COVID-19 variants. He didn’t elaborate on the comment.
Both the Moderna and Pfizer vaccine should be used as booster shots, he said.
“Right now, if we get boosters … it’s clear we want to make sure we get people, if possible, to get the boost from the original vaccine,” Fauci said.
Fauci has been the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases since 1984 and has become one of the federal government’s public faces in its messaging about COVID-19. In the interview, Fauci also said he hopes the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) fully authorizes the vaccines.
COVID-19 is the illness caused by the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus.
Representatives from the Mayo Clinic didn’t respond to a request for comment on Fauci’s remarks by press time.
Mayo Clinic and nference researchers studied records to determine the vaccines’ efficacy, although the scientists noted that it hasn’t yet been peer-reviewed.
