Published in the medical journal The Lancet, the study highlights the “public health benefits of a national vaccination program,” according to its authors, Pfizer scientists and the Israeli government.
They noted that in Israel, the world champion in vaccination, serum was “the main driver of the decline in Covid-19 infections.”
„However, we need to be cautious when it comes to generalizing these findings to other states, as the speed of vaccination programs and the evolution of the pandemic differ from country to country., ”They warn.
The study refers to health data collected between January 24 and April 3, when 72% of people over the age of 16 (almost 5 million people) and 90% of those over 65 in Israel received the two doses of Pfizer / BioNTech vaccine. The analysis focuses on the effectiveness of the vaccine against the English version (called B.1.1.7), which was dominant in the country.
The study shows that the vaccine is “extremely effective” in people over the age of 16 seven days after the second dose: it protects 95.3% against infections, 97.2% against hospitalizations and 96.7% against deaths. These levels of protection remain similar among those over 85. But they decrease significantly when people receive only one of the two doses: 57.7% against infection, 75.7% against hospitalizations and 77% against deaths in those over 16 years of age. This study “shows the importance of a complete vaccination in adults, with two doses,” the authors point out. According to them, a single dose could provide shorter protection, especially with the emergence of more vaccine-resistant variants.
During the analysis period, there were 232,268 confirmed Covid infections in Israel (with 4,481 severe infections and 1,113 deaths), and almost 95% of the samples tested were of the English version.
In February, a first large-scale study (1.2 million people) conducted in Israel and published in the journal NEJM reached similar conclusions.
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