JERUSALEM (Reuters) – The rapid launch of vaccination in Israel has made it the largest real-world study of the COVID-19 vaccine from Pfizer Inc. The results are showing and are promising.
More than half of eligible Israelis – about 3.5 million people – have already been fully or partially vaccinated. Older and at-risk groups, the first to be vaccinated, are seeing a dramatic drop in disease.
Among the first fully vaccinated group, there was a 53% reduction in new cases, a 39% decline in hospitalizations and a 31% decrease in serious illnesses from mid-January to 6 February, said Eran Segal, data scientist at Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel.
(Graph: Trends in COVID-19 infections and hospitalizations in Israel after vaccination -)
In the same period, among people under the age of 60 who later became eligible for vaccines, new cases fell by 20%, but hospitalizations and serious illnesses increased by 15% and 29%, respectively.
Reuters interviewed leading scientists in Israel and abroad, Israeli health officials, heads of hospitals and two of the country’s largest health providers about what new data shows of the world’s most efficient vaccine distribution.
The vaccination campaign provided a database that offers insights into the effectiveness of vaccines outside of controlled clinical trials and at what point countries can obtain the desired, but elusive, collective immunity.
More will be known in two weeks, as teams analyze the vaccine’s effectiveness in younger groups of Israelis, as well as target populations, such as people with diabetes, cancer and pregnant women, among a patient base at least 10 times larger than those in clinical studies.
“We need to have enough variety of people in that subgroup and enough follow-up time for you to be able to draw the right conclusions, and we are reaching that point,” said Ran Balicer, director of innovation at HMO Clalit, which covers more than half of the Israeli population. .
Pfizer is monitoring the Israeli launch weekly for information that can be used worldwide.
As a small country with universal health, advanced data resources and the promise of rapid implementation, Israel offered Pfizer a unique opportunity to study the real-world impact of the vaccine developed with BioNTech in Germany
But the company said it remains “difficult to predict the precise moment when protection of the herd may begin to manifest” because of many variables at stake, including measures of social distance and the number of new infections generated in each case, known as reproduction rate.
Even Israel, at the forefront of the global vaccination campaign, has reduced expectations of emerging quickly from the pandemic because of the increase in cases.
A third national blockade has struggled to contain the transmission, attributed to the virus variant that spread rapidly in the UK. On a positive note, the Pfizer / BioNTech injection appears to be effective against it.
“So far we have identified the same 90% to 95% effectiveness against the British strain,” said Hezi Levi, director general of Israel’s Ministry of Health.
“It is still early, because it is only now that we finish the first week after the second dose,” he said, adding: “It is too early to say anything about the South African variant.”
WHAT ARM?
Israel started its vaccination program on December 19 – the day after Hanukkah – after paying a premium for providing the Pfizer / BioNTech vaccine.
Four days later, the UK’s most contagious variant was detected in four people. Although the vaccine prevents disease in older people, the variant now accounts for about 80% of new cases.
Finding itself in a race between the vaccine and the new variant, Israel started giving vaccines to people over 60 and gradually opened the program to the rest of the population.
Every detail was digitally tracked, even in which arm the patient was spiked and from which bottle it came from.
A week after receiving the second dose of Pfizer – the point at which full protection is expected to be applied -, 254 out of 416,900 people were infected, according to Maccabi, a leading Israeli health provider.
(Graph: COVID-19 infections among vaccinated people -)
The comparison with an unvaccinated group revealed a 91% vaccine effectiveness, said Maccabi.
At 22 days after complete vaccination, no infection was recorded.
Israeli experts are confident that vaccines, rather than blocking measures, have reduced numbers, based on the study of different cities, age groups and pre-vaccination blocks.
The comparisons were “convincing in telling us that this is the effect of vaccination,” said Segal of the Weizmann Institute.
With 80% of the elderly partially or fully vaccinated, a more complete picture will begin to appear later this week.
“And we expect an even greater decline in general cases and in cases of severe morbidity,” said Balicer of HMO Clalit.
VACCINES AND TRANSMISSION
There may be early signs that vaccinations are preventing transmission of the virus, in addition to the disease
In Israel’s largest COVID-19 testing center, run by MyHeritage, researchers tracked a significant decrease in the amount of virus infected by people, known as the cT value, among the most vaccinated age groups.
This suggests that even if vaccinated people are infected, they are less likely to infect others, said MyHeritage’s science director, Yaniv Erlich.
“The data so far is probably clearer for Israel. I really believe that these vaccines will reduce progressive transmission, ”said Stefan Baral, of the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health in Maryland.
DECREASING INCOME
It is not clear whether Israel will be able to maintain its world-leading vaccination rate.
“When you vaccinate fast and hard, you eventually get to the most serious point – those who are less willing or more difficult to reach,” said Boaz Lev, head of the Ministry of Health’s advisory panel.
The rate of vaccination is seen even more crucial with the rapid transmission of the British variant.
“In the race between the spread of the variant in the UK and vaccinations, the end result is that we are seeing a kind of plateau in terms of critically ill patients,” said Segal.
The big question is whether vaccines can eradicate the pandemic.
Michal Linial, professor of molecular biology and bioinformatics at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, said data from the past few decades suggests that viruses have become endemic and seasonal.
She predicted that this coronavirus would become much less aggressive, perhaps requiring a booster injection in three years.
“The virus is not going anywhere,” she concluded.
Additional reporting by Dan Williams, Ronen Zvulun, Steven Scheer and Julie Steenhuysen; Written by Maayan Lubell; Bill Berkrot edition