Do COVID-19 Vaccines Prevent Virus Transmission? Mixed Evidence And a Major Study Underway

While COVID-19 vaccines have been shown to be largely effective at preventing illness and death, another question is whether they prevent transmission. In other words, can a vaccinated person still acquire and spread SARS-CoV-2? On March 30, Science News took a look at this question, arguing that existing studies, “suggest fully vaccinated people pose a low risk for transmitting the coronavirus.” Noting that real-world evidence looking at essential public and health workers shows that the vaccines are around 90 percent efficacious at preventing infections, they also point out that even one dose of the Pfizer or Moderna products reduced the chance of getting infected. Jeff Burgess, who is associate dean for research at the Mel and Enid Zuckerman College of Public Health at the University of Arizona in Tucson, opines on his own paper published in Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report from March 29, telling Science News that, “We clearly showed in our study that if you were at least 14 days out from your first shot, you had 80 percent protection.” Marm Kilpatrick, who is a researcher of infectious diseases at the University of California, Santa Cruz comments, “If you can’t get infected, you can’t infect anyone else, which means the vaccines can reduce transmission as well as the disease.”&nbsp;&nbsp;


