# Capture — 95 per cent

- **Claim filed:** The Pfizer vaccine “will prevent symptomatic COVID-19 in 95 per cent of recipients.” Also: “a 97.5 per cent chance the vaccine’s efficacy is at least 90.3 per cent.”
- **Who:** Therapeutic Goods Administration, reported 25 January 2021
- **URL:** https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/pfizer-covid-vaccine-provisionally-approved-for-australian-use-20210125-p56wko.html
- **Date on page:** 25 January 2021
- **Publisher:** The Sydney Morning Herald
- **Title:** Pfizer COVID vaccine provisionally approved for Australian use
- **Captured:** 2026-08-14
- **Method:** saved HTML (`smh-tga-2021-01-25.html`)

## Verbatim (SMH, quoting TGA)

> The Therapeutic Goods Administration says Australia’s first COVID-19 vaccine will prevent symptomatic COVID-19 in 95 per cent of recipients

> The TGA’s analyses puts the vaccine’s effectiveness at preventing symptomatic COVID-19 at 95 per cent – or, to put that another way, there is a 97.5 per cent chance the vaccine’s efficacy is at least 90.3 per cent.

## The unknowns, same page, same day

> It remains unclear if the vaccine will have any effect on reducing the transmission of the virus. It also remains unclear what effect the vaccine has on asymptomatic COVID-19, as people in the trial were only tested for COVID-19 if they had symptoms.

> It also remains unclear just how long the vaccine will be effective.

Scott Morrison, same day: “it is not a silver bullet.” Greg Hunt: “safe and effective.”

The trial: 170 confirmed symptomatic cases among 36,523 people in the interim analysis — 162 in the placebo arm.

## What this file does not do

It does not file “the vaccine did nothing.” The trial counted **symptomatic** disease against the strain in the trial. It files the slide from that endpoint to a folk 95% (or 97%) that meant you would not catch it and would not pass it on.