Webinars

Sample Sizes for Vaccine Trials

Written by nQuery Team | Apr 30, 2025 2:53:01 PM

Free Webinar
Sample Sizes for Vaccine Trials
Trial Designs for Assessing Vaccine Efficacy, Safety & Durability

In this webinar, Calvin O'Brien, Research Statistician at nQuery, will explore vaccine trial designs, specifically how to assess three key aspects of vaccine performance:

  1. Efficacy
  2. Safety
  3. Durability

Learning objective of this webinar:

In this webinar we will cover the statistical foundation of vaccine development and rollout using real world examples.

Most vaccine studies focus primarily on efficacy (how well a vaccine protects against disease) and safety (whether the vaccine causes adverse events). However, the full picture requires looking at various aspects together in order to assess the suitability of rollout to a large population, along with monitoring post rollout.

Key Statistical Approaches Covered in This Webinar

Ways to Evaluate Vaccine Efficacy

  • Risk ratio calculations and their implementation in sample size determination
  • Event-driven statistical approaches as used in COVID-19 vaccine trials
  • Poisson regression, binomial, and Cox proportional hazards models with practical examples

Approaches to Monitor and Understand Vaccine Safety

  • Mathematical foundations of relative incidence measurement
  • Sample size formulations for detecting rare adverse events
  • Accounting for age effects in safety signal detection

Assessing Vaccine Durability

  • Statistical approaches for measuring protection longevity
  • Power calculations for detecting waning immunity
  • Methodologies for ethical placebo-controlled studies