Nearly half of all Americans have received at least one shot of the COVID-19 vaccine, and many people may be wondering if there is a way to know just how well the vaccine is working.
Many people question if the intensity of their side effects is a sign of how well the vaccine is working.
"That’s a question I get a lot from patients as well as friends and family. The short answer is no," explained Dr. Joanna Schaenman, immunologist and clinical infectious disease specialist at UCLA Health. "We don’t really know whether there’s any connection between those local or systemic reactions that you tend to get right after the vaccine, and clinical protection. But I would say that the data suggests there’s not a connection."
Another common question is whether or not antibody testing can provide insight into how well the vaccine works.
"The answer is that we simply don’t know whether antibody levels after vaccination are associated with clinical protection," Dr.
Schaenman told KCBS Radio's "Ask An Expert" on Friday.
Additionally, there are a wide variety of antibody tests available on the market and not all tests are created equal.
"It’s very difficult to be confident that a particular test is going to give you the information that you need, and even with that result, again we don’t know how to interpret it," she said.
But while there is no way currently to know how effective the vaccine is on an individual level, will hundreds of millions of people receiving doses of the Pfizer, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson vaccines worldwide, there is plenty of data to show that by and large they are highly effective.
"The overall vaccine efficacy is excellent" based on both clinical trial data and real world data, said Dr. Schaenman. "It continues to demonstrate excellent clinical efficacy above 90% in most cases, in terms of protection from a symptomatic COVID-19 infection. When we do see breakthrough infections, they tend to be very mild."
"So regardless of whether your arm hurts or not or whether you’ve run out to get an antibody test or not, the data really shows that these vaccines work."
