An Israeli healthcare provider said Wednesday that Pfizer Inc.’s COVID-19 vaccine was 95% effective in a trial of 602,000 people, reinforcing the drug manufacturer’s effectiveness results.
Maccabi Healthcare Services, which covers more than a quarter of all Israelis, said in a statement that only 608 people had tested positive for COVID-19 more than a week after receiving the second of the required doses from Pfizer.
The comparison was against a group of 528,000 Israelis with similar backgrounds who did not receive the vaccine, Maccabi said. Of these, 20,621 tested positive.
“By comparing the proportion of new cases between vaccinated groups and those not yet vaccinated, the effectiveness of the vaccine in Israel is currently estimated at 95%, seven or more days after receiving the second dose,” he said. dir Maccabi.
Most of the 608 infected vaccinated reported only mild symptoms, such as headache or cough, Maccabi said. Some 21 required hospitalization, seven of whom had severe symptoms, he added.
Maccabi data reinforces the efficacy findings of Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech, which after a final phase trial also found that their vaccine was 95% effective.
Nearly 44% of the 9.1 million Israeli citizens have received at least one shot of the Pfizer vaccine, making the country the largest real-world study on its effectiveness.
On Wednesday, Clalit, Israel’s largest healthcare provider, reported a 94% drop in symptomatic cases of COVID-19 among 600,000 people who had received the two doses of Pfizer.