JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Israel’s largest healthcare provider reported a 94% drop in symptomatic COVID-19 infections on Sunday to 600,000 people who received two doses of Pfizer vaccine in the largest study to date. the country.
The health care organization (HMO) Clalit, which covers more than half of all Israelis, said the same group is also 92% less likely to develop severe illness due to the virus.
The comparison was with a group of the same size, with a corresponding medical history, who did not receive the vaccine.
“It shows unequivocally that the Pfizer coronavirus vaccine is extremely effective in the real world one week after the second dose, just as it was found in the clinical trial,” said Ran Balicer, director of innovation at Clalit.
He added that the data indicate that the Pfizer vaccine, which was developed in partnership with BioNTech in Germany, is even more effective two weeks or more after the second shot.
Researchers at the Weizmann Institute of Science, who compiled national data, said on Sunday that a sharp drop in hospitalization and serious illnesses previously identified in the first age group that was vaccinated – aged 60 or older – was first observed in those aged 55 years and over.
Hospitalizations and serious illnesses continued to rise in younger groups who started vaccinations weeks later.
Israel is launching a rapid launch of vaccines, and its database provides information on the vaccine’s effectiveness and when countries could obtain immunity from the herd.
Reporting by Ari Rabinovitch and Maayan Lubell; Edited by David Goodman