“At the moment, our best sense… is kind of a mixture that the efficacy of really all three vaccines right now – Pfizer, Moderna and [Johnson & Johnson] – is probably in that high-70 to low-90 percent range.”
That’s the estimation of Louisiana State Health Officer Dr. Joe Kanter, who told WWL Radio that while there are rare cases of vaccinated individuals still contracting Covid-19. In those cases, the infected parties either exhibit much milder symptoms of the virus or none at all.
But Kanter says he is keeping an eye on research out of Israel that shows a much lower success rate – 64%.
“I would never discount data coming from Israel,” Kanter said, citing the country’s close relationship with Pfizer throughout the vaccination rollout and the mechanisms they have in place for monitoring outbreaks.
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Kanter says the report from the Israel Ministry of Health has a “more robust contact-tracing” apparatus to determine the source of outbreaks and the full spread of the infection. This means much higher testing rates of people who may have come into contact with someone harboring the Covid infection.
Kanter also noted that an actively-mutating virus means the data is subject to change.
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“Nothing is static in terms of these variants,” Kanter said.
“They continue to change and shift, and what might have been true a month ago might slowly be not true in the coming weeks. And we’ve just got to pay attention to it.”