Overview
- The study, which was published Tuesday in JAMA Network Open, found the 2025–26 COVID-19 vaccine cut emergency and urgent care visits by about 50% and reduced COVID-19 hospitalizations by about 55%.
- Authors used data from roughly 85,700 emergency/urgent care encounters and 26,000 hospitalizations across 179 hospitals in seven states from September through December 2025 to reach the estimates.
- The paper had cleared the CDC’s internal scientific review and been approved for the agency’s MMWR before acting CDC director Jay Bhattacharya raised concerns this spring about its use of a test-negative design.
- The test-negative design compares people who seek care and test positive with those who seek care and test negative, a fast and cost-effective method that depends on assumptions about who seeks care and prior infections.
- Supporters and peer reviewers say the method is standard for routine vaccine surveillance, while critics call for longer cohort studies; experts warn that blocking established approaches could slow real-time monitoring and weaken public trust in federal health reporting.