The vaccine’s effectiveness on a large Israeli sample of inoculated individuals reached 95%, the exact rate predicted by Pfizer in its clinical trials, Maccabi Healthcare Services announced on Wednesday.
Now he has vaccinated 602,000 and only 608 have been infected, the equivalent of 1 in 1,000, he said. Of these, none died.
Only 21 of those infected were hospitalized: 11 with mild symptoms, 3 with moderate symptoms and only 7 with severe symptoms. This leads doctors in Maccabi to believe that the vaccine is not only reducing the number of confirmed patients, but also reducing the severity of the disease in those who fall ill.
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When Pfizer achieved 95% effectiveness in clinical trials, the medical community was impressed, but not sure if it could be replicated in the real world. The Maccabi data indicates that it is.
“The vaccine’s effectiveness in Israel is stable and high,” said Maccabi statistics analyst Anat Ekka Zohar.
A medical worker prepares a COVID-19 vaccine in Kiryat Ye’arim, on January 25, 2021. (Yonatan Sindel / Flash90)
To measure effectiveness, scientists measure levels of infection among people who have been at least a week since the second injection and compare them with the rates of unvaccinated people.
Statistics analyst at Maccabi Healthcare Services, Anat Ekka Zohar (courtesy of Anat Ekka Zohar)
Ekka Zohar believes that the slight increase in effectiveness since last week’s statistics, which put the effectiveness at 93%, is the fact that many young people have recently been vaccinated and are responding very well to the vaccine.
Data that includes young people are seen as important, as they give an idea of how the vaccine works among people with relatively large social contact. Younger people tend to have more daily interactions than the elderly, who were a priority in Israel’s vaccination campaign until recently.
“We clearly see very low morbidity rates among the group of young people who were vaccinated seven days after the first dose of the vaccine,” said Ekka Zohar.
Speaking as Israel tries to raise vaccination rates after a slowdown in the campaign, she asked people to look at the new statistics and go to vaccination centers.
“Once again, we call on the entire population over 16 years old to hurry up and get vaccinated, both adults and young people,” said Ekka Zohar. “The data prove, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that this is the most effective way to defeat the pandemic.”
