March 5, 2021
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1:30Now PlayingMary Duenwald, a Bloomberg Opinion editor, tested positive for Covid-19 even after receiving both doses of the Pfizer Inc.-BioNTech SE vaccine. Sam Fazeli, a pharmaceutical industry analyst for Bloomberg Intelligence, explains what happened.
The reality is that so-called sterilizing immunity, or protection that completely blocks a virus from infecting you, is rare. In fact, only one vaccine has been proven to provide that, and that is the smallpox shot.
If you think back to the phase III trials of the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna Inc. vaccines — arguably the ones with the best efficacy so far — they were 95% effective, meaning some vaccinated people still developed symptoms after the second dose, even if at a very low rate.
Also, outside the environment of a clinical trial, efficacy will be slightly lower; real-world data is showing about 90% efficacy. It’s also possible that you are infected with a new variant, such as the one that is circulating in New York, known as B.1.526. These variants are potentially better at getting past your antibody immunity.
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