Emerging data from Israel indicate that vaccines manufactured by Pfizer and BioNTech, as well as Moderna, may be even more effective than previous clinical trial results suggested.
CNN reports that the Israeli Ministry of Health studied more than 700,000 fully inoculated people – that is, those who received two doses of both vaccines – in the country and saw only 0.04% contract a COVID-19 infection.
The results were reported to reporters by Sharon Alroy Preis, head of Israel’s Ministry of Health, on Thursday. Israel has mainly used the Pfizer / BioNTech vaccine, which uses the same messenger RNA technology as Moderna.
The study, conducted in December 2020, looked at 715,425 individuals vaccinated within a week between the second dose.
Only 317 people contracted COVID-19 after inoculation, and 16 of those people were hospitalized.
Israel’s data used a larger population sample than the human tests by Pfizer and Moderna, which collected information from about 75,000 participants.
Although the new COVID-19 mutations are worrying medical experts and public health professionals, the Israel study does not appear to have distinguished between people infected with the original COVID-19 strain and a new variant, such as the South Africa mutation or the UK.
Pfizer already stated that their vaccine produces an immune response when tested against several strains of COVID-19, while Moderna is currently developing a booster vaccine to help bridge the gap between its original vaccine formula and the challenges posed by the new variants of COVID-19.
Other pharmaceutical companies are making progress with their new vaccine candidates. On thursday, Novavax released trial data suggesting an 89.8% efficacy rate against the original COVID-19 strain, along with a 60% rate against South Africa’s most contagious variant COVID-19.
Johnson & Johnson released trial phase three data Friday for its single-shot vaccine candidates, showing an overall effectiveness rate of 66 percent in preventing moderate to severe COVID-19 infections about 28 days after vaccination.