MedPage Today Publishes Editorial by Mercy Professor Rossi Hassad on Evaluating Vaccine Effectiveness

An editorial by Mercy College Professor Rossi Hassad, Ph.D., MPH, published last week in MedPage Today, expressed the epidemiologist’s concern that a key statistical measure evaluating the efficacy and effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines has been largely overlooked.

The editorial, “Statistical Considerations for Evaluating COVID Vaccine Protection,” appeared in the September 23, 2021, issue of MedPage Today, a clinical news source in which many of Hassad’s writings have appeared.

Known as the 95% confidence interval (CI), this statistical measure, according to Hassad, is used for generalizing or making an inference about the population and is expressed as a range of values. The implications of this range must be carefully considered and reported as part of optimal decision-making about vaccine effectiveness.

While Hassad reassured that all three vaccines now in use in the U.S. show evidence of “continued strong protection against COVID-19-associated hospitalization and death,” he called for more complete explanation of statistical data in published reports.