New nference COVID-19 Study and Online Tracker First to Produce Evidence of Increased COVID-19 Vaccinations on Decreased Viral Incidence by US Counties

CAMBRIDGE, Mass., March 9, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- nference, the AI-driven health technology company, today announced preprint publication of study "Higher COVID-19 vaccination rates are linked to decreased county-level COVID-19 incidence across USA." The research presents, for the first time, epidemiological evidence linking increased vaccinations to declining new COVID-19 cases. The company simultaneously released a new online tracker allowing the public to track and measure changes in vaccination and positivity rates in individual US counties, as well as learn of county-specific vaccination rollout issues and COVID-19 spikes, providing a local perspective to help raise awareness of the overall benefits of vaccination.

With mass vaccination efforts now ramping up to combat the COVID-19 pandemic, only in the past few weeks has the opportunity become available to assess whether declines in COVID-19 cases can be attributed to vaccinations and to identify specific, local motivators behind infection drops as well as spikes.

"We're at the start of this rollout, so this is the first analysis of its kind and scale across the US.," said Venky Soundararajan, PhD, co-founder and chief scientific officer of nference. "A month ago, we could say that COVID-19 incidents are on the decline. Now, we can say with some confidence, backed by data-driven analysis, in which counties the declines are potentially due to vaccination. Given the many other possible confounders, such as different counties having had different levels of exposure from previous infection waves and intrinsic variations in vaccine rollout rate, our study is the first attempt to amplify transparency in quantifying county-level vaccine effectiveness."

The study examines 580 individual counties in the United States through county-level PCR testing data from the CDC COVID Data Tracker, along with CovidActNow data on patients who have received at least one dose of either the Moderna or Pfizer/BioNTech COVID-19 vaccines as of March 1, 2021.

Results show cumulative vaccination percentage from December 1, 2020 to March 1, 2021 is significantly associated with a concomitant diminshment in COVID-19 incidence. As large declines in new positive tests occur alongside vaccination growth in individual counties, the numbers also suggest that everyone, unvaccinated and vaccinated, living in more vaccinated counties can receive some additional level of protection. nference is currently actively engaged in follow-up analysis to provide further insight.

"Previous studies from our team and others that were recently published on COVID vaccine effectiveness are a strong measure of why getting vaccinated is good for you. This study makes clear why personally getting vaccinated is also good for your neighbors," said Soundararajan.

The study's rapid generation can be attributed to the vast experience of nference data scientists in triangulating and synthesizing difficult-to-manage data. In this case, much of the vaccine data was synthesized across numerous, diverse sources, creating a harmonized resource that enables comparison of vaccination trends with the evolution of COVID incidence within each county and their neighborhood.

nference also released today an up-to-date, online tracker that displays current data on all counties included in the study, allowing the public to see in which counties increasing vaccination levels lead to fewer new infections. The goal is to support messaging of the benefits of vaccination for societal health, given the evidence garnered by recently concluded real-world evidence studies, conducted by nference, that reinforce the efficacy and safety of the FDA-authorized COVID-19 vaccines: "FDA-authorized COVID-19 vaccines are effective per real-world evidence synthesized across a multi-state health system" and "Real-time analysis of a mass vaccination effort confirms the safety of FDA-authorized mRNA vaccines for COVID-19 from Moderna and Pfizer/BioNtech."

"Even as people wait their turn to get vaccinated, there are reports of subpopulations declining to get vaccinated owing to misinformation that is amplified through some social media streams," said Soundararajan. "This new resource can help make it clear to the public the effectiveness of vaccination in the campaign against COVID-19."

In addition to the tracker reporting changes in vaccination levels and positivity numbers between Dec. 1, 2020 and March 1, 2021, each county's display includes a news feed providing comprehensive COVID-19 media coverage specific to that region. These articles help illustrate potential reasons behind some of the data displayed for that county. For example, data from Henry County, Ohio last month showed higher-than-expected virus incidence; the news feed highlights a delay in vaccine shipments as a possible cause.

As the COVID-19 pandemic has unfolded, the innovative and powerful AI technology implemented by nference on vast amounts of biomedical data has enabled discoveries with a wide range of implications that contribute to a greater understanding of the virus and, ultimately, are advancing patient care.

About nference
Through its powerful augmented intelligence software nferX®, nference is transforming health care by making biomedical knowledge computable. Its partnership with Mayo Clinic has given nference an opportunity to synthesize more than 100 years of institutional knowledge, producing real-world evidence in real time by converting large amounts of data into deep insights to advance discovery and development of diagnostics and therapeutics. nference is headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Follow nference on LinkedIn and Twitter. Visit us at nference.ai.

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