JERUSALEM (Reuters) – The rapid introduction of Israeli vaccination has made it the largest real-world study on the COVID-19 vaccine by Pfizer Inc. The results are spreading and promising.
More than half of eligible Israelis (about 3.5 million people) have been fully or partially vaccinated. Older, high-risk groups, the first to be inoculated, see a dramatic drop in disease.
Among the first fully vaccinated groups, there was a 53% reduction in new cases, a 39% decrease in hospitalizations and a 31% drop in serious illnesses from mid-January to February 6, he said. dir Eran Segal, data scientist at the 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 were eligible to receive shots later, new cases fell by 20%, but hospitalizations and serious illnesses increased by 15% and 29%, respectively.
Reuters interviewed prominent scientists from Israel and abroad, Israeli health officials, hospital chiefs and two of the country’s largest health care providers about new data showing the world’s most efficient vaccine launch.
Vaccine support has provided a database that provides information on vaccine efficacy outside of controlled clinical trials and when countries could achieve the sought-after but elusive immunity of the herd.
More will be known in two weeks, as teams analyze the effectiveness of the vaccine in younger groups of Israelis, as well as in targeted populations such as people with diabetes, cancer, and pregnant women, among a patient base of at least 10 times greater than those in clinical studies.
“We need to have enough variety of people in this subgroup and enough follow-up time so you can draw the right conclusions and we get to this point,” said Ran Balicer, director of innovation at HMO Clalit, which covers more than half of the Israeli population.
Pfizer monitors the Israeli launch weekly for information that can be used around the world.
As a small country with universal healthcare, advanced data features and the promise of rapid deployment, Israel provided Pfizer with the unique opportunity to study the real-world impact of the vaccine developed with German BioNTech.
But the company said it was “difficult to predict the exact time when herd protection may begin to manifest” due to many variables at stake, including social distancing measures and the number of new infections generated by each case. , known as the reproduction rate.
Even Israel, at the forefront of the global vaccine campaign, has lowered expectations of getting out of the pandemic quickly due to rising cases.
A third national blockade has had trouble containing the transmission, attributed to the rapidly spreading variant of the virus in the UK. On a positive note, the Pfizer / BioNTech feature 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 the Israeli Ministry of Health.
“It’s still early, because we only finished the first week after the second dose,” he said, adding, “It’s too early to say anything about the South African variant.”
WHICH ARM?
Israel began its vaccination program on December 19, the day after Hanukkah, after paying a premium for supplies of the Pfizer / BioNTech vaccine.
Four days later, the most contagious variant of the UK was detected in four people. Although the vaccine prevents the disease in the elderly, the variant now accounts for 80% of new cases.
Being in a race between the vaccine and the new variant, Israel began firing on those over 60 and was opening the program to the rest of the population.
All details were digitally tracked, up to which arm the patient was nailed and from which bottle it came.
One week after receiving the second dose of Pfizer, the point at which full protection is expected to begin, 254 out of 416,900 people were infected, according to Maccabi, a leading Israeli health care provider.
(Graph: COVID-19 infections among vaccinated people -)
Comparing this with an unvaccinated group revealed a vaccine efficacy of 91%, Maccabi said.
At 22 days of complete vaccination, no infections were recorded.
Israeli experts are confident that vaccines instead of blocking measures reduced the numbers, based on the study of different cities, age groups and pre-vaccine blockages.
The comparisons were “convincing in telling us that this is the effect of vaccination,” Segal of the Weizmann Institute said.
With 80% of the elderly partially or fully vaccinated, a fuller picture will begin to emerge as soon as this week.
“And we expect a further 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 reduce the transmission of the virus in addition to the disease
At Israel’s largest COVID-19 testing center, run by MyHeritage, researchers have tracked a significant decrease in the number of people infected with the virus, known as the cT value, among the most vaccinated age groups.
This suggests that even if vaccinated people become infected, they are less likely to infect others, said Yaniv Erlich, scientific director of MyHeritage.
“The data so far is probably the clearest in Israel. I think these vaccines will reduce transmission, “said Stefan Baral of the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health in Maryland.
DIMINISHING RETURNS
It is unclear whether Israel will be able to maintain its world-leading vaccination rate.
“When you get vaccinated quickly and a lot, in the end you get to the most difficult situations – those that are less willing or harder to access,” said Boaz Lev, head of the Ministry of Health’s advisory group.
The rate of vaccination is seen to be even more crucial with the rapid transmission of the British variant.
“In the race between the spread of the UK variant and vaccinations, the end result is that we are seeing a kind of plateau in terms of the seriously ill,” Segal said.
The big question is whether vaccines can eradicate the pandemic.
Michal Linial, a professor of molecular biology and bioinformatics at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, said data from past decades suggest that viruses become endemic and seasonal.
He predicted that this coronavirus would become much less aggressive, perhaps requiring a booster shot within three years.
“The virus is not going anywhere,” he concluded.
Additional reports by Dan Williams, Ronen Zvulun, Steven Scheer and Julie Steenhuysen; Written by Maayan Lubell; Edited by Bill Berkrot