A previously-blocked study on COVID-19 vaccines coauthored by CDC scientists has been published by the Journal of the American Medical Association. According to the study, the COVID-19 vaccine was 55% effective against hospitalization and 50% effective against urgent care visits for COVID-related issues.
“Adults can reduce their likelihood of severe COVID-19–associated outcomes by obtaining a 2025-2026 COVID-19 vaccination,” the study said.
Acting CDC Director Jay Bhattacharya declined to publish the paper in the agency’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. “The methodology used in the study at issue, test-negative design, has been used before but has well-known limitations,” he wrote in an op-ed for The Washington Post. “The core problem is that, to measure the effectiveness of a vaccine in keeping people out of a hospital (for instance), this method throws away all data about people, vaccinated or not, who are never hospitalized. Instead, it replaces data with unverifiable assumptions, leading to bias.”
Natalie Dean, an Emory University biostatistics professional, wrote in a commentary accompanying the report, “For decades, CDC-funded networks have monitored the performance of seasonal influenza vaccines in real-life settings. That same framework is now being extended to COVID-19 through integrated respiratory virus surveillance systems. It is critical that we continue to characterize and publish estimates of vaccine effectiveness in populations with changing immunity against evolving viral strains. Now is the time to strengthen, not weaken, this infrastructure to support timely public health decision-making.”
Separately, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. sent a letter to the editor-in-chief of Toxicology Reports earlier this month, questioning the removal of a study that linked sudden deaths among infants to vaccines. “I sent this letter to the Editor-in-Chief of Toxicology Reports demanding a full explanation for the removal of a published article examining vaccines and sudden infant death,” Kennedy wrote on X. “Americans have a right to know why scientific papers are removed, who made those decisions, what evidence supported them, and whether the same standards are applied consistently.”
