Peter Doshi, an associate professor at the University of Maryland School of Pharmacy who accessed the data, found that Pfizer hid data on waning immunity as millions lined up to get its COVID-19 vaccine.
In late 2020, the airways became saturated with triumphant reporting of Pfizer and Moderna’s “95% effective” COVID-19 vaccines. Millions rolled up their sleeves with the belief that reaching herd immunity would end the pandemic.
But by June 2021, the pandemic endgame story had gone off script. Highly vaccinated countries like Israel were experiencing a new wave of COVID-19 infections, vaccination rates were starting to slow, and public skepticism was snowballing.
Authorities tried to allay fears by saying that new infections were “rare breakthroughs,” but the data became too difficult to ignore.
By early July, the Israeli Ministry of Health reported that vaccine effectiveness against infection and symptomatic disease had fallen to 64%. Three weeks later, revised estimates put Pfizer’s vaccine at just 39% effective.
Delayed disclosure
Regulatory filings date-stamped from April 2021 show Pfizer had strong evidence that its vaccine’s efficacy waned — results the company did not publicly release until the end of July.
Peter Doshi, associate professor at the University of Maryland School of Pharmacy, accessed these documents from the Canadian drug regulator, Health Canada.
“It’s clear from the documents that these analyses were almost four months old by the time they became public,” said Doshi.
“It’s disappointing that neither Pfizer, nor regulators, disclosed these data until it was too obvious to ignore new outbreaks in Israel and Massachusetts, which made it clear that vaccine performance was not holding up.”
When mRNA vaccines were first authorized in 2020, U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) scientists had listed critical “gaps” in the knowledge base. Two of them — effectiveness against viral transmission and duration of protection.
The revised guidelines, put out this week by the WHO’s Strategic Advisory Group of Experts on Immunization, state that COVID vaccines are not recommended for healthy kids and teens.
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