Repository file
Capture — 95 per cent
evidence/2021/ninety-five-per-cent/source.md
From Can’t Explain Raw capture
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.