Risk of death seems to go up significantly once vaccination is 6+months old.
Now a study from the Public Health Institute, the Veterans Affairs Medical Center and the University of Texas Health Science Center, published today in the journal Science, has analyzed COVID infection by vaccination status among 780,225 Veterans.
Researchers found that protection against any COVID-19 infection declined for all vaccine types, with overall vaccine protection declining from 87.9% in February to 48.1% by October 2021.
- The decline was greatest for the Janssen (Johnson & Johnson) vaccine, with protection against infection declining from 86.4% in March to 13.1% in September
- Declines for PfizerBioNTech were from 86.9% to 43.3%
- Declines for Moderna were 89.2% to 58%.
The study showed that the risk of death from COVID infection was highest in unvaccinated Veterans, regardless of age and comorbidities. While some breakthrough infections resulted in death, vaccination remained protective against death in those who became infected during the Delta surge.
For those under 65 years old, vaccines overall were 81.7% effective against death.
- Protection against death was greatest for the Pfizer vaccine, at 84.3%.
- Moderna was the next most effective, at 81.5%.
- Janssen was 73% effective.
For those 65 and over, overall vaccine effectiveness against death was 71.6%.
- Moderna was 75.5% effective.
- Pfizer was 70.1% effective.
- Janssen was 52.2% effective.