The vaccine produced by Pfizer and BioNTech is 98.8 percent effective in preventing deaths or hospitalizations due to COVID-19, said the head of Israel’s health ministry.
The Times of Israel reported that the director general of Israel’s health ministry, Chezy Levy, said in a statement that the data collected by his agency also found that the vaccine was 99.2% effective in preventing severe cases of the disease. The data analyzed by the agency included only patients who received both doses of the Pfizer vaccine, the newspaper noted.
“The vaccine drastically reduces serious illnesses and deaths,” said Levy, according to the Times of Israel.
“Thanks to Israel’s strong health system, which has allowed us to vaccinate a large percentage of the population, and our epidemiological screening facilities, we are the first country in the world that can show the effect of the vaccine in the real clinical world,” Levy added.
The health minister added in Saturday’s statement that Israel will continue to try to inoculate all adults over 16 against the virus before proceeding with vaccines for the country’s youngest population.
Israel has won praise for the fast pace of its program, which has so far led about a third of the country’s population to receive a vaccine. The country’s government has also faced criticism, however, about the availability of the vaccine in territories under Palestinian control, including the Gaza Strip, with Palestinian authorities calling on Israeli authorities to increase the number of vaccines provided to the millions of Palestinians living in these areas. areas.
The head of the Gaza health ministry said last week that the first doses of COVID-19 vaccines had started to arrive in the territory, but stressed that the 2,000 supplied were well below the quantity needed to vaccinate health professionals in the territory.