TAMPA, Fla. — Oxford, AstraZeneca join Pfizer and Moderna as vaccine candidates that may soon be rushed out for distribution.
Recent testing shows the vaccine developed at England's Oxford University works well and is safe.
That makes three vaccines now in the final stages.
With Pfizer and Moderna at 95 percent efficacy, let's give you some sharper insight into what that means.
We'll do that with the expertise of our country's top infectious disease expert, Dr. Anthony Fauci. He held a conversation about this topic with The Hastings Center.
First off, he says the primary endpoint of the Pfizer and Moderna trials was a clinically apparent disease, which could be mild to moderate. The secondary endpoint was infection or severe disease.
Then he explained the difference between efficacy and effectiveness.
Efficacy is the result of the trial under appropriately controlled conditions.
Effectiveness is how the vaccine impacts the population that you ultimately want to impact.
So right now, Dr. Fauci says we have highly efficacious vaccines.
"How effective they will be, on society will be determined by a number of factors including how many people decide they want to get vaccinated. So if you have a 95 percent efficacious vaccine and only 50 percent of the people want to get vaccinated, that's not going to be a very effective tool," Fauci said.
So Dr. Fauci says what we don't know yet is whether these vaccines are effective in preventing infection, which is part of that secondary endpoint.
He says we know two things: it's efficacious in preventing infection that is clinically recognizable, and it also is effective in preventing severe disease. What we don't know yet is whether it's effective in preventing infection.
"In other words, am I a person who was infected but I didn't get symptoms I count as a plus for the vaccine, but I'm still infected. Now the question that we don't know, which is going to be very interesting, if I'm infected, but was vaccinated, is the level of virus going to be so low in me, because even though I got infected, the immune response dampened the level of virus, so that I'm not going to be infecting other people. That we don't know."
He says the vaccine you're getting is preventing you from getting COVID disease. We just have to see the impact it's going to have on transmission.
And another interesting thing Dr. Fauci pointed out: getting vaccinated with this highly efficacious vaccine doesn't mean we can abandon these public health measures like wearing masks and social distancing.
He says we cannot pull back until the level of virus is so low that the risk of someone getting infected is "miniscule."
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