Johnson & Johnson Breakthrough Cases Had a Higher Hospitalization Rate Compared With Other COVID Vaccines, Redmond Startup Finds

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A study of nearly 2 million people vaccinated against the coronavirus has found that those receiving the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines had less of a chance of being hospitalized after a breakthrough infection than people who got the Johnson & Johnson vaccine.

Truveta, a Redmond startup that has pooled data from 20 American health systems from 42 states, released the new findings Tuesday morning. They are based on an analysis of 1.7 million vaccinated people living in the United States. The company is hoping its data set, which is updated daily, will offer a more comprehensive look at the health of Americans as a whole.

"If we're going to study our country, we need data from our country," said Terry Myerson, CEO of Truveta, who noted that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has leaned heavily on studies from Israel so far to issue guidance on booster shots.

The company found that 9% of both Pfizer and Moderna-vaccinated patients who suffer a breakthrough infection end up hospitalized. In contrast, the same figure is 15% for those who got the J&J vaccine. Pfizer and Moderna's vaccines are based on a technology called mRNA, whereas J&J vaccines use a different and traditional technology called an adenovirus.

Truveta also found that people who have high-risk conditions such as cancer, organ transplants or HIV are twice as likely to end up hospitalized if they suffer a breakthrough infection.

Of all the high-risk conditions studied, the company found that people with chronic kidney disease were hospitalized with breakthrough infections at the highest rate at 25%.



The study also found that less than 1% of fully vaccinated people experience adverse events from the vaccines, but people vaccinated with the Moderna vaccine showed 40% more adverse events than Pfizer.

Truveta's database includes approximately 35 million people, representing 16% of clinical care in the United States. However, the first study the company led was based on a subset of those people, totaling 1.7 million people, based on data it had "de-identified," or audited for privacy and security, and who they knew with "high likelihood" were fully vaccinated.

Access to the platform will be sold to major health systems and life science companies around the country. Right now, it is only being used by "early adopters."

Ultimately, Myerson said the company will look to partner with the government to amplify the impact of its dataset. When asked if the company planned to charge the government for access to the data or if they would share it with agencies freely, the company said, "we welcome conversations with the government to explore options."

The company has raised nearly $200 million to date, largely from the major health systems that have committed to sharing their data with the platform. Microsoft, where Myerson previously led Windows, has also invested in the company. The amount was not made public. The company uses Microsoft Azure's cloud technology to host much of its platform.