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Abstract

In this report, we provide summary estimates, from publications and reports, of vaccine efficacy (VE) for the COVID-19 vaccines that are being rolled out on a global scale. We find that, on average, the efficacy against any disease with infection is 85% (95% CI: 71 - 93%) after a full course of vaccination. The VE against severe disease, hospitalization or death averages close to 100%. The average VE against infection, regardless of symptoms, is 84% (95% CI: 70 - 91%). We also find that the average VE against transmission to others for Infected vaccinated people is 54% (95% CI: 38 - 66%). Finally, we prove summary estimates of the VE against any disease with infection for some of the variants of concern (VOC). The average VE for the VOC B.1.1.7, B.1.1.28 (P1) and B.1.351 are 86% (95% CI: 65 - 84%), 61% (95% CI: 43 - 73%) and 56% (95% CI: 29 - 73%), respectively.

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2.4. Coronaviruses of Bovine
The most common coronavirus of bovine is BCoV. This virus is able to cause a variety of clinical forms, including a severe enteric disease in neonate calves, winter disease (a severe enteric form) in adult dairy cattle, and a respiratory disease in cattle of all age groups [20].
Interestingly, HCoV-OC43 likely evolved from ancestral BCoV strains that crossed the interspecies barrier and established an infection in human beings around 1890, following a 290-long nucleotide deletion downstream of the spike gene [21].

Animal Coronaviruses and SARS-COV-2 in Animals, What Do We Actually Know?

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3,921 adults were enrolled in the study and odour samples collected from 1097 SARS-CoV-2 infected and 2031 uninfected individuals. OSC sensors were able to distinguish between SARS-CoV-2 infected individuals and uninfected, with sensitivity from 98% (95% CI 95-100) to 100% and specificity from 99% (95% CI 97-100) to 100%. Six dogs were able to distinguish between samples with sensitivity ranging from 82% (95% CI 76-87) to 94% (95% CI 89-98) and specificity ranging from 76% (95% CI 70-82) to 92% (95% CI 88-96).

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A relatively narrow range of sensitivity and specificity was apparent between the different dogs tested. In practice, only the highest performing dogs would be deployed. Our results suggest, however, that, in this experimental setting, the dogs had a higher accuracy than the LFT (lateral flow test, strip test like a pregnancy test) which has a wider range and lower overall sensitivity of between 58-77%.29 RT-PCR is the gold standard test due to a high sensitivity (97-99%) and specificity (95-99%),30 but dogs
have a major advantage over both these tests as they are incredibly rapid. Our preparatory work indicates that two dogs could screen 300 people in 30 min, for example, the time it takes to disembark from a plane, and PCR would only need to be used to test those individuals identified as positive by the dogs (Figure 4).

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Our study has a number of limitations. Firstly, although dogs could be used to screen samples, the real value would be screening people, and we have not yet tested dogs on people infected with SARS-CoV-2. Secondly, our results suggest dogs are able to detect the B.1.1.7 variant, although the sample size was not sufficient for a reliable estimate of sensitivity. In the event that a new variant of SARS-CoV-2 resulted in a different odour profile, trained dogs could be rapidly re-trained to detect the new odour within two days providing odour samples for the new variant are available. Thirdly, there is a possibility that other respiratory viral infections produce similar odour signatures to SARS-CoV-2. This is, however, unlikely given that 26% of uninfected participants in our study displayed classic SARS-CoV-2, cold or flu-like symptoms, and the dogs correctly identified them as uninfected. Additionally, other studies suggest that different viral infections result in distinct odour profiles.9,10, 11 ,12