Real-world effectiveness of Ad26.COV2.S adenoviral vector vaccine for COVID-19

In light of the massive and rapid vaccination campaign against COVID-19, continuous real-world effectiveness and safety assessment of the FDA-authorized vaccines is critical to amplify transparency, build public trust, and ultimately improve overall health outcomes. In this study, we leveraged large-scale longitudinal curation of electronic health records (EHRs) from the multi-state Mayo Clinic health system (MN, AZ, FL, WN, IA). We compared the infection rate of 2,195 individuals who received a single dose of the Ad26.COV2.S vaccine from Johnson & Johnson (J&J) to the infection rate of 21,950 unvaccinated, propensity-matched individuals between February 27th and April 14th 2021. Of the 1,779 vaccinated individuals with at least two weeks of follow-up, only 3 (0.17%) tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 15 days or more after vaccination compared to 128 of 17,744 (0.72%) unvaccinated individuals (4.34 fold reduction rate). This corresponds to a vaccine effectiveness of 76.7% (95% CI: 30.3-95.3%) in preventing SARS-CoV-2 infection with onset at least two weeks after vaccination. This data is consistent with the clinical trial-reported efficacy of Ad26.COV2.S in preventing moderate to severe COVID-19 with onset at least 14 days after vaccine administration (66.9%; 95% CI: 59.0-73.4%). Due to the recent authorization of the Ad26.COV2.S vaccine, there are not yet enough hospitalizations, ICU admissions, or deaths within this cohort to robustly assess the effect of vaccination on COVID-19 severity, but these outcomes will be continually assessed in near-real-time with our platform. Collectively, this study provides further evidence that a single dose of Ad26.COV2.S is highly effective in preventing SARS-CoV-2 infection and reaffirms the urgent need to continue mass vaccination efforts globally.