TEL AVIV – Latest data from Israel shows a 94% drop in symptomatic Covid-19 infections among 600,000 people taking two doses of Pfizer Inc. and the BioNTech SE vaccine, providing important new insights to other countries as they run their own campaigns.
According to a study by Clalit, Israel’s largest healthcare provider, the vaccinated group was 92% less likely to develop serious illness from the disease. Clalit compared 600,000 people who got the injections to a group of the same size that didn’t – in what was the largest vaccine study in the country to date.
Clalit said the study, which was conducted with a team from Harvard University, included 430,000 people who were between 16 and 59 years old, and 170,000 people who were 60 or older. It was the first of its kind to show such a high level of efficacy for Pfizer’s vaccine for people aged 70 and older, according to the healthcare provider, due to the limited size of the clinical trials.
The study was conducted so that each vaccinated individual was tested against an unvaccinated individual with a similar profile, including their risk level for infection, risk level for developing serious disease and overall health.
“It is now unequivocal that Pfizer’s vaccine against the coronavirus is incredibly effective in real life one week after the second dose, just as found in the clinical study,” said Ran Balicer, Clalit’s chief innovation officer and one of the authors. of the study in a Hebrew statement published Sunday with the study. The vaccine is even more effective two weeks after the second injection, he added.