The Moderna and Pfizer coronavirus vaccines were found to be more effective at preventing hospitalization than the Johnson & Johnson vaccine in a study published last week by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The study, which came out just as the advisory panel to the US Food and Drug Administration was debating whether to authorize Pfizer booster shots to the entire US public, also showed that the Pfizer vaccine’s effectiveness begins to wane after about four months.
The advisory panel recommended administering a booster shot to adults over the age of 65, healthcare workers and people at high-risk for developing severe disease - a decision that was authorized by the FDA on Wednesday.
Specifically, the study of around 3,700 Americans over the age of 18 who were hospitalized at 21 centers throughout the country between March and August showed that Moderna was 93% effective against preventing hospitalization, Pfizer 88% and Johnson & Johnson 71%.
With this effectivity rate, the CDC said that “these real-world data suggest that the two-dose Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech mRNA vaccine regimens provide more protection than does the 1-dose Janssen viral vector vaccine regimen.”
The scientists added, however, that despite this difference, all three vaccinations worked well to prevent COVID-19 hospitalization.