The 2024-2025 COVID-19 vaccines are still offering high protection against severe complications

Embargoed until: Publicly released: 2026-02-04 03:00

International

Story by Rachel McDonald, Australian Science Media Centre. Photo by Spencer Davis on Unsplash.

The 2024-2025 updated versions of the Pfizer, Moderna and Novavax COVID-19 vaccines are still offering high protection against requiring mechanical ventilation or dying from the virus, according to US research. The researchers looked at recent vaccination rates among 8493 patients hospitalised with a respiratory illness, including 1888 who tested positive to COVID-19 and 6605 who tested negative. The researchers estimated that the 2024-2025 vaccines were 40% effective at preventing COVID-19 related hospitalisation and 79% effective at preventing death or needing invasive mechanical ventilation. They say the protection appeared similar across the different dominant COVID-19 variants in the area at the time of the study.

News release

From: JAMA

About The Study: This multicenter, case-control study found that the vaccine effectiveness of 2024-2025 COVID-19 vaccines was associated with protection against COVID-19 hospitalization and severe in-hospital outcomes and against multiple JN.1 descendants. Monitoring COVID-19 vaccine effectiveness, including stratifying by SARS-CoV-2 lineage and spike protein mutations, remains important to guide COVID-19 vaccine composition and recommendations.

Attachments

Note: Not all attachments are visible to the general public. Research URLs will go live after the embargo ends.

Research JAMA, Web page The URL will go live after the embargo ends

Journal/
conference: JAMA Network Open

Research:Paper

Organisation/s: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, USA

Funder: This work was funded by contract 75D30122C14944 from the CDC to the Vanderbilt University Medical Center.

Media Contact/s

Contact details are only visible to registered journalists.