By Alice Park SENIOR HEALTH CORRESPONDENT
THE LATEST COVID-19 VACCINE offers strong protection against the currently dominant strain of the virus, according to a recent report in the MMWR, published by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). It’s the first effectiveness data for the updated vaccine, which was released last fall.
Using federal and pharmacy-reported datasets, the team of CDC scientists compared the COVID-19 test results of people who were having symptoms from September 2023 to mid-January 2024 with their vaccination status. They found that the new vaccine was about 54% effective.
They further calculated that the shot was 49% effective at protecting against symptoms from the JN.1 variant, which causes most of the new infections occurring in the U.S. right now. That’s both good and surprising news, since the shot was designed to target a different version of the virus, the XBB.1.5 variant.
“This is, to my knowledge, the first vaccine-effectiveness estimates available worldwide for JN.1,” says Ruth Link-Gelles, who leads the vaccine-effectiveness program for COVID-19 and RSV at CDC and who led the analysis. “What these results show is that someone who got this vaccine would have an extra boost of protection against symptomatic infection from both the XBB variant that was common in the fall, as well as JN.1, which is circulating now.”
Her group plans to release more detailed data on the vaccine’s impact on emergency-room and urgent-care visits, as well as hospitalizations, in coming weeks. But Link-Gelles says these initial data are encouraging. “The COVID-19 vaccine is looking a lot like the flu vaccine, where we see about 50% protection against influenza in a good
