Israeli Researchers Investigate the Effectiveness of Pfizer’s COVID Vaccine

May, 2021 - By SMI

The researchers’ findings states that if the countries increase their vaccine uptake, it could lead to decline in the SARS-Cov-2 occurrences. 

Pfizer-BioNTech’s Coronavirus vaccine (BNT162b2) is one of the vaccines that has been created to provide protection against coronavirus infection. Israel’s COVID-19 campaign focuses on vaccinating 6.5 million of residents. The Pfizer-BioNTech’s vaccine (BNT162b2) was authorized to be used in the country for an emergency use from December 2020, this decision was made due to the higher number of COVID positive cases in Israel. The vaccine was observed to have a high efficacy rate against COVID-19 as tested in individuals aged 16 and above in a randomized controlled trial. The country’s health ministry launched a nationwide campaign where they planned to administer two doses of vaccine in individuals at an interval of 21 days. The vaccine campaign is only for individuals aged 16 and above, which makes for 71% of Israel’s population.

As of April 3^rd, 2021, 61% of this 6.5 million Israeli population have received at least one dose. A study carried out by Alroy-Preis et al. estimated the real-world efficacy of the vaccine, using the nation’s surveillance data for four months during the vaccination campaign. Their studies compared incidence rate of COVID-19 infection, COVID related hospitalization, critical hospitalization, as well as death occurrence of individuals from COVID who were already given two doses of the vaccine, and compared these incidence rates with the incidence rates among the unvaccinated people.

The research showed that after the data was adjusted for sex, age and other factors, the BNT162b2 vaccine was seen to have 95% efficacy against the coronavirus, while it has 91.5% efficacy against COVID asymptomatic infection, 97% efficacy against symptomatic COVID, 97.5% efficacy against COVID positive individuals with critical hospitalization, and 97.2% efficacy against COVID positive people who were hospitalized. The vaccine efficacy was also observed to be 96% for people aged 75 and above. It was observed that across all age groups when the cumulative vaccine cover increased, the incident cases of COVID declined. Further study indicated that the vaccine is effective against the B.1.1.7 variant.