Study shows chances of contracting COVID increase with each vaccine dose

A recently published study from the Cleveland Clinic has questioned COVID-19 vaccine efficacy and posited that additional doses may in fact increase one's likeliness of contracting the disease.

Conducted between September and December of this year, the clinic examined 51,000 of its employees to test the "bivalent" vaccine, created to protect against the original COVID-19 strain and its Omicron variants. It also sought to determine the effectiveness of subsequent vaccine doses. The study has not yet been peer-reviewed.

The survey ultimately discovered an association between higher risk of COVID-19 and those individuals who had previously received a greater number of vaccine doses. The study further determined that the bivalent vaccines were only 30% effective in preventing infection against different variants of the Omicron strain of the virus.

"The association of increased risk of COVID-19 with higher numbers of prior vaccine doses in our study, was unexpected," the study reads. "A simplistic explanation might be that those who received more doses were more likely to be individuals at higher risk of COVID-19. A small proportion of individuals may have fit this description. However, the majority of subjects in this study were generally young individuals and all were eligible to have received at least 3 doses of vaccine by the study start date, and which they had every opportunity to do."

"Therefore, those who received fewer than 3 doses (>45% of individuals in the study) were not those ineligible to receive the vaccine, but those who chose not to follow the CDC's recommendations on remaining updated with COVID-19 vaccination, and one could reasonably expect these individuals to have been more likely to have exhibited higher risk-taking behavior," it continued. "Despite this, their risk of acquiring COVID-19 was lower than those who received a larger number of prior vaccine doses."

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has long posited that receipt of the various vaccines may not prevent someone from contracting the disease, but rather reduce the severity of symptoms.