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Israel’s largest healthcare provider on Sunday reported a 94 percent drop in symptomatic Covid-19 infections among 600,000 people who received two doses of the Pfizer vaccine in the country’s largest study to date.
The Clalit health maintenance organization (HMO), which covers more than half of all Israelis, said the same group was also 92% less likely to develop serious illness from the virus.
The comparison was with a group of the same size, with matching medical history, who had not received the vaccine.
“It unequivocally demonstrates that Pfizer’s coronavirus vaccine is extremely effective in the real world one week after the second dose, as discovered in the clinical study,” said Ran Balicer, Clalit’s chief innovation officer.
He added that data indicates that the Pfizer vaccine, which was developed in partnership with Germany’s BioNTech, is even more effective two weeks or more after the second injection.
Researchers at the Weizmann Institute of Sciences, who have been tabulating national data, said Sunday that a sharp decline in previously identified hospitalizations and serious illnesses was seen for the first time among the first age group to be vaccinated, 60 and older, in those 55 and older.
Hospitalizations and serious illnesses continued to rise in the younger age groups who started getting vaccinated weeks later.
Israel has been conducting a rapid launch of vaccines and its database offers information on the effectiveness of the vaccine and at what point countries could achieve herd immunity. – Reuters
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