Three Mondays in a row have now yielded three apparently effective and safe vaccines against the pandemic disease Covid-19. Amid an unprecedented peak in cases in the United States and Europe, with US deaths pushing 250,000 and the country showing uncontrolled spread of the virus, that ain’t bad news.
But slightly hidden in that non-bad news was news even less bad. This week’s entrant, a vaccine from the drug company AstraZeneca and researchers at Oxford University, came with tantalizing hints of a particular capability that would, if it bears out, make a huge difference in fighting the pandemic. The makers of the two other vaccines in play have reported only evidence that their drugs keep people from getting sick—which is to say, fewer vaccinated people have moderate to severe symptoms and test positive for infection. The vaccines do this very well. But researchers working on the AstraZeneca version said they also had signs of reduced transmission, of people spreading the disease from one person to another. The AstraZeneca results have some perplexing elements, for sure, but if the transmission thing holds up, it’s going to matter. A lot.
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