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FREDERIC J. BROWN
Positive news on the effectiveness and production of corona vaccines: a large-scale study in Israel evaluating data from more than one million people has confirmed the extremely high effectiveness of the Biontech / Pfizer agent used in Germany. The American manufacturer Moderna, whose vaccine is also approved in the EU and Germany, has meanwhile announced a major expansion of its production.
Moderna now wants to produce 700 million doses of vaccines this year instead of the 600 million doses of vaccines previously planned. So far, the company from the US state of Massachusetts has shipped about 60 million doses of vaccines, 55 million of them in the United States. Next year, Moderna wants to increase the production of its corona vaccine to 1.4 billion through large investments.
Moderna has also developed a version of its vaccine specifically targeted against the South African variant of the coronavirus. The South African mutant, like the British and Brazilian mutants, is considered particularly contagious. The new version of the drug Moderna has now been submitted to NIH for human clinical trials, according to the company.
To test the efficacy of the vaccine from the Mainz company Biontech and its US partner Pfizer, researchers in Israel evaluated data from 1.2 million people. According to the results of this study published by the American journal “New England Journal of Medicine”, the vaccine protects 94 percent against the symptoms of the disease.
Previous studies had already shown a 95 percent efficacy level for the Biontech / Pifzer agent. However, these investigations had only been carried out under clinical conditions and with the participation of only several thousand test persons.
The current Israeli study examined the efficacy of the vaccine under conditions of actual mass use. The investigation was conducted between December 20 and February 1, a period when the British virus variant was already spreading in Israel, making the investigation even more informative.
Of the 1.2 million people whose data was analyzed, half were vaccinated and half were not. Each vaccinated person was compared to an unvaccinated person with the same or similar characteristics, including age, sex, geographic origin, and health status.
The comparison showed a 57 percent effectiveness of the Biontech / Pfizer vaccine against the symptoms of coronavirus disease within a period of 14 to 20 days after the administration of the first dose of the vaccine. Efficacy increased to 94 percent seven days after the second vaccination.
According to the study, people who received the vaccine a second time also had a 92 percent lower risk of becoming infected with the coronavirus than those who were not vaccinated. The agent’s effectiveness is roughly the same in all age groups, including people over 70, Ben Reis, one of the study’s co-authors, told the AFP news agency.
In Israel, about a third of the nine million people in the country have already been vaccinated with the two recommended doses of Biontech / Pfizer. Another study in Israel, which has yet to be officially published, also showed that nearly 90 percent of the drug prevented the transmission of the virus to other people. Several media reported a few days ago on this study, which is based on data from more than 1.7 million people who had been vaccinated.
The corona vaccine from the US corporation Johnson & Johnson (J&J) is also very effective, according to the US Food and Drug Administration. According to documents released Wednesday, the agent prevented 85.9 percent of serious illnesses in a large clinical study in the United States. J&J submitted an application for emergency approval of its vaccine in the United States in early February. On Friday, a committee of FDA experts will discuss the approval.
