Was Pfizer BioNTech's executive Janine Small's statement in the European Parliament that the company never tested its mRNA COVID-19 vaccine to prevent transmission before launching it on the market a bombshell? No, that's not true: such trials were never required by the regulators, nor did the company claim that.
The claim appeared in a video (archived here) published on TikTok on Aug. 7, 2023. The Czech caption, translated by Lead Stories staff, reads:
The top employee of Pfizer admits under an oath that its mRNA vaccines were never tested for stopping transmission of the virus before they were launched on the market.
This is what the post looked like on TikTok at the time of writing:
(Source: TikTok screenshot taken on Wed Aug 9 07:08:03 2023 UTC)
The video uses clips from the hearing of the pharmaceutical companies' executives before the European Parliament Covid-19 committee on October 10, 2022, excerpts of which can be found here. After the hearing, a Dutch MEP Rob Roos, posted this on Twitter on Oct.11, 2022, saying that a Pfizer executive had just admitted to him that the vaccine had never been tested to stop transmission of the virus. "This removes the entire legal basis for COVID passports", Roos says in his post, while asking others to share it.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration granted an Emergency Use Authorization for Pfizer BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine on December 11, 2020, following an earlier decision by the UK authorities. The FDA said in the statement that "with science guiding our decision making, the available safety and effectiveness data support the authorization of the Pfizer BioNTech Covid-19 Vaccine because the vaccine's known and potential benefits clearly outweigh its known and potential risk". The regulator cited a randomized, placebo-controlled international study with 37,586 participants for evaluating the safety and efficacy data of the vaccine. The FDA also said in the statement that at "this time" there was no data available to determine how long the protection from the virus would last, or if there was any evidence that it would prevent transmission of the virus from person to person.
The European Medicine Agency, the EU's regulatory body, concluded in its assessment report on Feb. 19, 2021, that is "presently" unknown whether the vaccine protects against asymptomatic infection, or "its impact on viral transmission."
Pfizer BioNTech trial protocol for the vaccine, published by the company, can be found here. It says the trial was designed to determine if the vaccine is "safe and effective" in preventing Covid-19 disease.
The effect of the vaccine on the transmission of the virus between humans was then examined in a number of studies. This study from October 28, 2021, for example, concludes that it is plausible that vaccination reduced transmission for the earlier Covid-19 variants. The scientists say it is less true for omicron and the new Covid-19 variants.
Lead Stories has already debunked other claims concerning COVID-19 here.
