Pfizer-BioNTech bullet could help end pandemic, Israeli study shows

Pfizer Inc. And the BioNTech SE COVID-19 vaccine was highly effective against the virus in a study that followed nearly 1.2 million people in Israel, results that public health experts said showed that vaccines could end the pandemic.

Two doses of the vaccine prevented 94% of COVID-19 cases in 596,618 people vaccinated between December. 20 and Feb. 1, about a quarter of whom were over 60, teams from the Clalit Research Institute and Harvard University reported in a study published Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine.

The researchers matched each vaccine person to someone who did not receive a bullet, enabling the best analysis yet as to whether very good results from an earlier clinical trial in the real world could be formulated. The Pfizer-BioNTech view was cleaned up every lump. It was so effective, in fact, that outside experts said it could be possible to stop the pandemic with widespread use.

“This is the type of vaccine that can give us hope that its immunity may be possible,” said Raina MacIntyre, a biosafety professor at the University of New South Wales in Sydney who was not involved in the study. the levels of efficacy seen in Israel, she said, about 60% to 70% of the population should be vaccinated enough to prevent diseases as well as illness and death and “the chance best for resuming normal life and opening up society. “

After two doses, the vaccine was just as effective for adults aged 70 and over as it was for younger people. There were indications that the pill may not work as well for people who have been ill with three or more other illnesses, such as high blood pressure and diabetes. But the gain remained strong, with 89% protection from COVID-19 symptoms seven days after the second dose.

And for most people, protection was already important two or three weeks after the first dose.

The results were also positive for another closely watched feature: transmission inhibition. Although the research team noted that the study was not designed to study distribution, as participants were not proactively tested, there appeared to be an effect: 92 were excluded. % of recorded infections, including those that were asymptomatic, among those who received the vaccine. .

“We’re able to get a real-world measure of vaccine effectiveness,” said Ben Reis, co-author of the study who is the director of the predictive medicine group at Boston and Harvard Children’s Hospital.

This was the largest study that measured the effect of vaccination outside the strict limits of a randomized randomized clinical trial that aimed to measure efficacy for regulators. That allowed researchers to see if any shift from vaccine records or logistics issues to the image, which needed to be stored frozen, would change results.

Importantly, by the end of the period surveyed, as many as four in five of the diseases in Israel of the various infectious viruses first identified in the UK provided more information that had been missing from the results of a clinical trial of the vaccine, which was conducted before the variant began to become widespread.

The results of the new study suggest “the vaccine offers at least some protection from that variability as well,” said Zoe McLaren, an associate professor in the School of Public Policy at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. McLaren, who was not involved in the study, suggested that some sources of bias, such as differences in test levels or risk of exposure, could remain between those who received the vaccine and those who did not, but the conclusion remains. unchanged, McLaren said.

“It’s very good news,” she said. “The impact of this study is clear: high levels of vaccination in the population will reduce referrals and keep cases low.”

The study is the latest in a series of positive results out of Israel, which has the highest levels in the world of COVID-19 vaccines. In an effort to get the best possible comparison, organizers were trying to fix everyone who received the vaccine with as many people as possible who were unvaccinated.

For example, an ultra-rectangular Jew would be from a particular neighborhood, with a certain number of flu vaccines in the last five years and two other medical illnesses matched by an ultra-rectangular man of the same age. , the same neighborhood, and with the same number of vaccines and medical conditions as before, said Noa Dagan, AI – led data and medicine director at Clalit.

“It’s very, very special to make sure that this is what we call an exchange,” Dagan said. “As you can imagine, this process is not that easy.”

These games will be harder to find as the Israeli inclusion campaign continues, narrowing the pool of potential nonvaccinated comparators, she said. But researchers plan to continue as long as possible, with more data updates planned.