- Efficacy against typical COVID-19 was 94% seven or more days after the second dose
- Ghana is the first country to receive views under the global COVAX scheme
- The Johnson & Johnson single-dose vaccine has been found to be highly effective against the malignant COVID-19
WASHINGTON: A real-world study of 1.2 million Israelis on the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine showed the drug was 94% effective against the virus reaffirming belief in the power of major vaccine campaigns to end disease pandemic coronavirus.
The good news came when Ghana became the first country to receive views under the global COVAX scheme, paving the way for poor countries to catch up with richer parts of the world.
An Israeli study, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, also showed that it has a strong protective benefit against infection, an important element in its onset.
“This is the first large-scale peer-reviewed evidence for the effectiveness of vaccines in real-world situations,” said Ben Reis, a researcher at Harvard Medical School and one of the authors of the paper, to AFP.
It included nearly 600,000 recipients of the images and the only number who were closely matched to their immunized peers by age, sex, geography, medical knowledge and characteristics other.
The efficacy against COVID-19 was typical 94% seven or more days after the second dose – very close to the 95% achieved through Phase 3 clinical trials.
More than 217 million doses of vaccine have been given worldwide, according to an AFP report Wednesday, although most were given in high-income countries.
There are high hopes that the inoculations will finally allow the world to emerge from a pandemic that killed more than 2.4 million, infected 112 million, and disrupted the global economy.
But health experts have warned that unless the whole world comes to vaccines, the pandemic will not end.
The head of the World Health Organization recommended the first delivery of the COVAX vaccines on Wednesday.
“At last!” WHO Chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in a tweet.
The WHO is one of several organizations behind COVAX, which aims to deliver at least two billion doses worldwide by the end of the year.
The 600,000 doses delivered to Ghana are in a live televised concert from Oxford-AstraZeneca, and will be administered in several Ghanaian cities from Tuesday.
They are part of the first tranche of delivery tied up for a number of low- and middle-income countries, including Ivory Coast this week.
COVAX, led by Gavi of the Vaccine Alliance, WHO and the Consortium for Epidemic Preparation Innovation (CEPI), seeks to ensure that vaccines are distributed evenly across the globe.
In South Africa, struggling with a recession in addition to the pandemic, Finance Minister Tito Mboweni said the government planned to allocate 10 billion rand ($ 688 million) to purchase coronavirus vaccines and delivered over the next two years.
One-shot vaccine
At the same time more upbeat data about the Johnson & Johnson single-dose vaccine, which has been shown to be highly effective against COVID-19 malignancy, including more recent changes, appeared in detailed data released released by the US regulator.
The vaccine is likely to be authorized soon, making it the third most widely available country in the country.
U.S. biotechnology company Moderna also announced that their new COVID vaccine candidate aimed at the South African coronavirus dangerous version has been sent to government laboratories for testing.
But there were new problems with the European vaccine rollout after AstraZeneca said it would only be able to deliver half the promised doses to the EU, deepening tensions with the bloc over supply shortages.
This is the latest scenario for the bloc, which went on fire for the slow release of the vaccine.
EU leader Ursula von der Leyen was locked in a war of words with AstraZeneca earlier this year after accusing the British-Swedish company of breaching a contract by delaying delivery vaccine.
But she hit a more capable tone Wednesday, saying she was “optimistic” about the release.
“There are always new questions that we can come up with in a generally friendly solution,” she told a German newspaper.
Six countries match
Elsewhere on the continent, Hungary went ahead with their own campaign, administering Chinese-made Sinopharm jabs in the first one for the EU, after being like the the first EU country to give the Sputnik V vaccine to Russia.
Ukraine also marked a landmark on Wednesday, giving the country the first COVID spotlight, a slow start to their own vaccination program that has sparked widespread anger there.
In Israel, parliament introduced a law that would allow the government to share the identities of people who were not vaccinated against the crown virus with other authorities, raising privacy concerns for those who are choosing the vaccine.
In sport, the Six Nations rugby match between France and Scotland will take place in Paris this weekend as planned despite an outbreak of coronavirus cases in the home camp of 15 player and staff involved.
