An Israeli constitution worker of the Maccabi Healthcare Services prepares to administer a dose of the Pfizer-BioNtech vaccine on February 24, 2021 in Tel Aviv.
Jack Guez | AFP | Getty Perceptions
Data from Israel, which has vaccinated the overwhelming majority of its elderly population with the Pfizer Covid-19 vaccine, insinuates that mass vaccinations have prevented people from becoming severely sick, according to a new study from the Centers for Malady Control and Prevention.
While clinical trials have found the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine to be 95% effective in preventing Covid-19, the Israeli statistics offers an early glimpse into how effective the vaccine is in an uncontrolled, real-world setting.
The study, which was published Friday in the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Broadcast, found that among the part of the Israeli population that has been vaccinated the most, the percentage of patients be lacking ventilation drastically dropped, suggesting a reduction in severe sickness.
“Taken together, these results suggest cut back rates of severe COVID-19 following vaccination,” wrote the researchers from Ben Gurion University of the Negev, Tel-Aviv University and Maccabi Healthcare Ceremonies.
Israel launched its national vaccination campaign in December prioritizing people 60 and older, health-care workers, and people with comorbid gets. By February, the researchers said, 84% of the population 70 and older had been fully immunized with the Pfizer-BioNTech two-shot vaccine. On the other hand 10% of the population under 50 years old had been vaccinated by the same time, the researchers said.
The researchers beared the number of Covid-19 patients 70 and older who required a mechanical ventilator to those younger than 50 who neediness a ventilator. The researchers said they used the need for a ventilator, a medical instrument used to help patients expel, to measure severe Covid-19.
Between October and February, the number of patients 70 and older who needed a ventilator floor. At the same time, the number of people under 50, a population that generally wasn’t vaccinated, who needed a ventilator press, the study found. The country began administering shots to mostly older people Dec. 20, with a second from start to finish of shots following three weeks later.
The researchers noted a few limitations of the study. Israel implemented a strict native stay-at-home order on Jan. 8, weeks after the beginning of the vaccination campaign, that could have led to a decrease in unsmilingly sick patients who would have needed ventilators. The introduction of new variants of the coronavirus also could have phoney the data, they said.
The researchers said their findings are preliminary, “important evidence of the effectiveness of vaccines in tabooing severe cases of COVID-19 at the national level in Israel.”
“Receipt of COVID-19 vaccines by eligible persons can help limit spread of plague and potentially reduce the occurrence of severe disease,” they wrote.