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COVID-19 Vaccine Effectiveness

What to know

Vaccine effectiveness is a measure of how well vaccination works under real-world conditions to protect people against health outcomes such as infection, symptomatic illness, hospitalization, and death.

Illustration of virus, vaccine dose, calendar, and clock.

What CDC is doing

Results of vaccine effectiveness studies are critical to CDC’s vaccine program and national vaccine policy decision-making.

The overall goal of CDC’s vaccine effectiveness program is to generate the comprehensive evidence needed to inform COVID-19 vaccine policy decisions and CDC guidance on other prevention measures.

To accomplish this, CDC in collaboration with public health and academic partners, conducts observational studies to evaluate the real-world effectiveness of authorized and licensed COVID-19 vaccines in the United States.

These studies generate data on how well vaccines work according to:

  • Age group (for example, young children, adolescents, adults, and adults ages 65 and older)
  • Risk group (for example, people with underlying health conditions and pregnant women)
  • Risk setting (for example, residents of long-term care facilities and healthcare workers)
  • Outcome (for example, against severe outcomes, such as hospitalization or death; and milder outcomes, such as symptomatic infection)
  • Vaccine product (for example, original monovalent, bivalent, or updated [2023-24] monovalent)
  • Vaccine dose (for example, primary series, additional doses, time since last dose)

CDC is committed to routinely evaluating vaccine effectiveness to detect changes that could be due to:

  • Waning of vaccine protection

This work helps CDC identify population subgroups who may benefit from additional doses in the future.

Updates summarizing the results of CDC led vaccine effectiveness evaluations are provided on COVID Data Tracker.

Guiding principles for monitoring vaccine effectiveness

The goals of CDC’s COVID-19 vaccine effectiveness program are to evaluate existing COVID-19 vaccines and inform decisions by the U.S. Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices regarding COVID-19 vaccine policy. CDC accomplishes these goals by:

  • Assessing COVID-19 vaccine effectiveness in key populations and against key outcomes (see below)
  • Providing timely data to evaluate effectiveness of new vaccine recommendations
  • Detecting changes in COVID-19 vaccine effectiveness due to waning of vaccine-induced protection and emergence of new variants
  • Including populations at high risk for severe COVID-19
  • Communicating findings to policy makers, the scientific community, the public, and other stakeholders

Resources

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Content Source:
National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases; Coronavirus and Other Respiratory Viruses Division