Viral Pfizer 'admission' not what it seems
What was claimed |
The verdict |
A Pfizer official admitted to the EU Parliament that the company’s COVID-19 vaccine was never tested for its effect on the transmission of the coronavirus, a member of the European Parliament claims. |
False. Pfizer’s clinical trials were never designed to measure the vaccine’s effect on viral transmission, nor did they claim as such. Additionally, the vaccine did reduce transmission in earlier variants of the virus. |
By Ellen McCutchan
A claim that a Pfizer spokeswoman "admitted" that the company's COVID-19 vaccine was "never tested on preventing transmission" is not accurate.
In a video viewed close to 13 million times on Twitter alone, Rob Roos, a Dutch member of the European Parliament, alleges that a Pfizer director "admitted" that "at the time of introduction, the vaccine had never been tested on stopping the transmission of the virus".
"This removes the entire legal basis for the COVID passport," Mr Roos says in the video.
A clip from a European Parliamentary hearing follows in which Mr Roos asks Pfizer's president of international developed markets, Janine Small, if the vaccine was "tested on stopping the transmission of the virus before it entered the market".
In response, Ms Small answers "no", and says the company had to "move at the speed of science".
But despite Mr Roos' allegations that this was a "scandalous" admission by the company, Pfizer never claimed that its pre-market trials tested the vaccine's effect on transmission.
Julie Leask, a social scientist specialising in immunisation, told FactLab the claim made by Mr Roos "heavily distorts the facts".
According to Professor Leask, the before-market trials of COVID-19 vaccines had a "primary outcome of reducing risk of any disease and severe disease, but not transmission".
"It was never guaranteed the vaccine would give sterilising immunity," Professor Leask said in a statement (which was also provided to other media outlets).
Pfizer spokesman Andrew Widger, meanwhile, told US fact-checking outlet PolitiFact the company's trial was "designed and powered" to test the vaccine's efficacy on preventing disease and serious disease.
"Stopping transmission was not a study endpoint," he told the fact checkers.
Indeed, the report on Pfizer's stage 3 clinical trial, published by the New England Journal of Medicine in December 2020, does not refer to viral transmission.
The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) noted in its announcement of emergency use authorisation of the vaccine that there was not yet evidence that it prevented transmission of the virus from person to person.
Rob Roos, a Dutch member of the European Parliament.
Similarly, in Australia, provisional approval for the vaccine granted by the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) in August 2021 was made on the basis that the trials had shown the vaccine to be effective in preventing disease.
This was consistent with its January 2021 public assessment report, which said that this approval would be granted for its use as "active immunisation to prevent coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by SARS-CoV-2".
Importantly, the assessment noted that the question of the vaccine's efficacy in relation to viral transmission was "yet to be addressed".
Additionally, Professor Leask told FactLab the Pfizer vaccine had initially reduced transmission of the coronavirus.
"Evidence from household studies showed there was a reduction in transmission against Alpha strain," Professor Leask explained.
"Delta managed to better evade immunity from vaccines and previous disease, so when it appeared, its capacity to reduce transmission was reduced. That is even more so for Omicron."
Professor Leask explained that the vaccine’s effect on disease and disease severity would also have had an effect on transmission. “If you reduce risk of any infection (which the trials showed) you can also reduce risk of transmission,” she said.
“Real world studies published last year estimated a 40–50 per cent reduction in risk of household transmission of the Alpha variant,” she said.
In terms of public messaging there had been a "greater emphasis on being vaccinated to protect others" earlier in the pandemic as "that is what the data showed at the time," she said.
"New variants changed that situation — for now. With better targeted vaccines, we may again see greater capacity to reduce transmission."
FactLab has previously explained how vaccine effectiveness has evolved during the pandemic, with some early studies finding that two doses of an mRNA vaccine were 85-95 per cent effective at preventing infection in the first place.
The verdictFalse. Pfizer did not “admit" that its COVID-19 vaccine had never been tested for its effect on transmission of the coronavirus. The company’s clinical trials were never designed to measure the vaccine’s effect on viral transmission, nor did Pfizer claim that they did. Additionally, early household studies showed the vaccine did work on preventing transmission in earlier variants of the virus.
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