New study says Moderna vaccine tops at preventing COVID-19 hospitalizations

Image via AP.

A Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report released Friday shows Moderna was 93% effective in preventing patients without immunocompromising conditions from being hospitalized with COVID-19 in a six-month period between March and August.

The two-shot Moderna vaccine offered more protection from COVID-19 hospitalizations than the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, which also requires two shots, or the one-shot Johnson & Johnson vaccine. The Pfizer and Johnson &Johnson shots showed 88% and 71% effectiveness, respectively, according to the latest edition of the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.

In reaching its conclusion, CDC researchers analyzed 3,689 hospitalized adults at 21 different hospitals in 18 different states, including the University of Miami Medical Center in Miami, admitted to the hospital with flu-like symptoms and a positive COVID-19 test.

Ultimately 1,786 patients were excluded for a variety of reasons leaving researchers with 2,362 patients in the study. Of those patients, 64% were unvaccinated; 12,9% were fully vaccinated with the Moderna vaccine; 20% were fully vaccinated with the Pfizer vaccine and 3.1% were fully vaccinated with the Johnson & Johnson vaccine.

The difference between the effectiveness between the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines, researchers said, was primarily driven by a decline in Pfizer’s effectiveness after 120 days.

Researchers also recruited for the study 100 volunteers who had been vaccinated for a period of between two and six weeks to ascertain their antibody responses to the shot. Researchers found that post-vaccination anti RBD antibody levels were higher in participants vaccinated with Moderna than Pfizer or Johnson &Johnson.

While the vaccine effectiveness varies among the three products that have been approved for use in the United States, all three offered protection from COVID-19 hospitalizations.

Meanwhile, CDC data show that as of Thursday, 11,966,293 people in Florida were fully vaccinated, or nearly 56% of the total population, above the 54.4% vaccination rate nationally. Florida outpaces other southeastern state. when it comes to the percentage of people in the state who are fully vaccinated. CDC data show that just 41% of Alabama’s population is completely vaccinated and about 44% of Georgia’s population is completely vaccinated.