Abstract:
SARS-CoV-2 vaccines provide high protection against infection to the vaccinated individual and provide indirect protection to its surroundings by blocking further transmission. Divergent results have been reported on the effectiveness of the SARS-CoV-2vaccines. Here, we argue that this divergence is since the analyses did not consider indirect protection. Using a novel heterogeneous infection model and real-world data, we demonstrate that heterogeneous vaccination rates among families and communities, both spatially and temporally, and the study design that is used may significantly skew the vaccine effectiveness estimations. We show that estimations of a vaccine with 85% effectiveness will vary between marked underestimation of ∼70% and overestimation of ∼95% depending on the number of interactions between vaccinated and unvaccinated individuals.
https://technion.zoom.us/j/94950420992
