“New data showing that even just one dose of the Pfizer vaccine can provide as much as 90% protection. Really positive news!”
My understanding is that the reported effectiveness numbers are from a specific snapshot in time (like 14 days after the second shot - to standardize analysis and comparisons) but that actual effectiveness tends to continue to improve a bit more for a while after these arbitrary benchmarks, on each bodies own timeline.
They now have extensive time-series analysis of the effectiveness of Pfizer’s vaccine from Israel. I’d guess that is where they are getting this new information.
We will have to wait to see how long protection lasts (a year, or a lifetime), but I expect that the peak effectiveness will likely be better than the arbitrary point in time they happened to choose to measure, for the purposes of having a controlled study.
So is Pfizer markedly better than Moderna?
Read an article written last week that basically stated after 4 weeks with one Pfizer dose a person is “bulletproof”....95+ % protected.
According to my physician, the second dose gives an added protection that is only fractionally better (2-3 more %).
Based on previous experience with SARS2003 and MERS2012, we should expect immunity to last between 1 and 3 years. That holds for either someone recovering from infection or someone receiving a vaccine. That doesn't mean we'll necessarily need to continue vaccinating. Once smallpox was stamped out of existence, there was no need to continue vaccinating for it. Routine smallpox vaccination ended decades ago. That may happen with this as well.
Scotland data:
https://www.ed.ac.uk/files/atoms/files/scotland_firstvaccinedata_preprint.pdf
Peak efficacy was at 84% at 28-35 days after vaccination. The following week it was down to 61% and the next week 58%.
Here is a German study from this month on
Age-dependent immune response to the Biontech/Pfizer BNT162b2 COVID-19 vaccination
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.03.03.21251066v1
“While the majority of participants in both groups produced specific IgG antibody titers against SARS-CoV-2 spike protein, titers were significantly lower in elderly participants. Although the increment of antibody levels after the second immunization was higher in elderly participants, the absolute mean titer of this group remained lower than the <60 group. After the second vaccination, 31.3 % of the elderly had no detectable neutralizing antibodies in contrast to the younger group, in which only 2.2% had no detectable neutralizing antibodies.”