A study by Israel’s largest health provider on Sunday found that after participants received two doses of the Pfizer coronavirus vaccine, they saw a 94% drop in symptomatic COVID-19 infections, according to a report.
Clalit, the healthcare system that covers most Israelis, compared 600,000 people who received both doses of the Pfizer vaccine with a group of the same size who had a compatible medical history and had not yet received the vaccine.
The study found that people in the group were also 92% less likely to develop severe virus disease after receiving the two jabs, according to Reuters.
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Dry ice is placed in a box containing the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine as it is prepared to be shipped to the Pfizer Global Supply Kalamazoo plant in Portage, Michigan, Sunday, December 13, 2020. (AP Photo / Morry Gash, Pool)
The data almost matched Pfizer’s Phase 3 clinical trial, which showed that the vaccine is 95% effective.
“This shows unequivocally that the Pfizer coronavirus vaccine is extremely effective in the real world a week after the second dose, as was found in the clinical study,” said Ran Balicer, director of innovation at Clalit.
Balicer added that the data show that the Pfizer vaccine, developed in partnership with BioNTech in Germany, was even more effective “two weeks or more after the second injection”, reported the news organization.
Israel has been conducting a rapid vaccine launch and is leading all countries with about 70.5 doses of vaccine per 100 people, according to Bloomberg’s COVID-19 Vaccine Tracker.
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Meanwhile, a sharp decline in hospitalization and serious illnesses has also been reported for the first time in people 55 and older, said researchers at the Weizmann Institute of Science, who are mapping national data.
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Since Monday’s start, Israel has reported more than 727,485 coronavirus infections and at least 5,403 virus deaths since the pandemic began, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.