The Pfizer vaccine appears to be only 64% effective at preventing infection from COVID-19 after a certain amount of time, according to new data coming out of Israel.
However, some doctors are skeptical of the results.
Dr. Amesh Adalja, Senior Scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, discussed what the results might mean with KCBS Radio's Holly Quan and Dan Mitchinson Tuesday morning
Studies from other countries such as Canada and the United Kingdom show much higher effectiveness, Adalja said. But Israel was one of the first countries to vaccinate heavily, he said.
"It may also be the fact that we're looking at seven or eight months after the initial doses of the vaccine," said Adalja.
The full results have yet to be released. "We need a lot more data to know exactly what it means," he said.
What matters most though, is whether the vaccine can prevent serious illness, hospitalization or death. "All of our vaccines do tremendously well when it comes to that," said Adalja.
He anticipates that more efficacy studies over time will start coming out in the coming months.
And it's unlikely that the virus is ever really going to go away. "We'll be talking about COVID-19 five, ten years from now," he said. "Our goal was to make it more like the ordinary respiratory virus that we can deal with year in and year out."
That's what the vaccine is meant to do, and what the vaccine is doing, he said.
Boosters might be necessary if vaccinated people are getting new infections serious enough to require hospitalization, but otherwise Adalja thinks they're not essential.
Looking ahead, Adalja believes that while new cases might continue to arise, particularly in the winter months, there won't be many hospitalizations and it's unlikely another lockdown is in the future.
