Only 0.04% of Israelis took COVID-19 after two injections of the Pfizer vaccine

Immunity to COVID-19 is expected to increase within a week after receiving the second dose of the Pfizer vaccine.

According to studies by Pfizer, the vaccine was around 95% effective, which is considered very high. Israeli data appears to confirm the effectiveness of the inoculation, showing an even more promising result.

At the end of the day, Maccabi Healthcare Services – one of the country’s four health maintenance organizations – released the first results of its members’ vaccination campaign, with the organization also comparing the data to an uninoculated control group.

About 248,000 Maccabi members were already a week after the second shot on Thursday. Of these, only 66 were infected with the virus, most of them over 55 and about half with pre-existing diseases. All those infected had only a mild form of the disease and none were hospitalized.

In the same period, about 8,250 new cases of COVID-19 appeared in the control group of about 900,000 people with a diverse health profile. Those who were not inoculated were, therefore, 11 times more likely to contract the disease than those who were immunized, showing 92% effectiveness.

“The fact that seven to 18 days after receiving the second dose the vaccine shows 92% effectiveness is a very encouraging piece of information,” according to Dr. Anat Aka Zohar, head of Maccabi’s Information and Digital Health Division. “We will continue to monitor the situation to see if the number increases and reaches the 95% shown during the Pfizer study.”

Israel has established itself as a vaccination powerhouse. So far, more than three million people have received their first dose of the Pfizer vaccine – including 82% of people over 60 – and 1.5 million have received both vaccines.