Coronavirus vaccines are exceeding expectations in the real world – even in the face of variants

Coronavirus vaccines are exceeding expectations in the real world – even in the face of variants

By the time coronavirus vaccines were rolled out to the public, tens of thousands of people had already received their shots in clinical trials. The results of those studies gave us a good sense of how well the vaccines worked: Pfizer's was found to reduce the risk of getting COVID-19 by 95%, while Moderna's had an efficacy of 94.5%. Johnson & Johnson's single-dose shot, meanwhile, was found to cut the risk of infection by 66% globally — and by 72% among US trial participants. But the three trials were difficult to compare side by side, since they happened at different stages in the pandemic and in different geographic regions. Now, real-world studies are beginning to offer a clearer picture of how well the vaccines perform outside trials and in the face of emerging variants. For the most part, it's great news: Pfizer and Moderna's vaccines seem to be just as effective in real life as in their trials. Recent studies have also found that both shots prevent asymptomatic infections, a result that wasn't yet known when the trial data came out. A from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that Pfizer and Moderna's shots were, as a whole,