MedPage Today Publishes Editorial by 鱨 Professor Rossi Hassad on Evaluating Vaccine Effectiveness
An editorial by 鱨 College Professor Rossi Hassad, Ph.D., MPH, published last week in MedPage Today, expressed the epidemiologist’s concern that a key statistical measure evaluating the efficacy and effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines has been largely overlooked.
The editorial, “Statistical Considerations for Evaluating COVID Vaccine Protection,” appeared in the September 23, 2021, issue of MedPage Today, a clinical news source in which many of Hassad’s writings have appeared.
Known as the 95% confidence interval (CI), this statistical measure, according to Hassad, is used for generalizing or making an inference about the population and is expressed as a range of values. The implications of this range must be carefully considered and reported as part of optimal decision-making about vaccine effectiveness.
While Hassad reassured that all three vaccines now in use in the U.S. show evidence of “continued strong protection against COVID-19-associated hospitalization and death,” he called for more complete explanation of statistical data in published reports.