The first significant real-world trial of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine to be independently tested reveals the shot is extremely successful at stopping COVID-19.
Until now, the bulk of evidence on the effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines has come from clinical trials. It left an aspect of confusion about how outcomes will apply in the real world and its unknown variables.
Two doses of the Pfizer shot cut symptomatic COVID-19 cases by 94 percent among all age ranges, and serious illnesses by nearly as many, according to a study undertaken in Israel two months after one of the world's largest rollouts.
According to the evidence released and peer-reviewed in the New England Journal of Medicine on Wednesday, a single shot was 57 percent successful in defending against symptomatic infections after two weeks.
How Did The Researchers Study Such a Large Population?
The research comprised 1,193,236 participants divided into two well-matched groups: those who had been vaccinated and those who had not been vaccinated.
The trial took place at a time when Israel had its highest number of cases. According to IFLScience, the number of cases in Israel peaked in late January 2021 with nearly 12,000 new cases per day.
"This study estimates a high effectiveness of the BNT162b2 vaccine for preventing symptomatic COVID-19 in a noncontrolled setting, similar to the vaccine efficacy reported in the randomized trial," the authors wrote on the paper titled "BNT162b2 mRNA Covid-19 Vaccine in a Nationwide Mass Vaccination Setting."
The analysis also shows that efficacy is high in combating the extreme consequences of hospitalization, significant illness, and death. These observations raise the probability that newly accepted vaccines will help reduce the global impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The vaccine appears to be effective against the UK strain of the disease, which was the most widespread. Events of the South African variant were much too unusual to make such estimation in that situation.
Is It A Good News?
A separate IFLScience article claims that the latest study if confirmed, would be very good news. We might quickly say goodbye to behavioral interventions like lockdowns and social distancing to keep the epidemic at bay when the vaccine campaign would be sufficient to stop the spread of the disease.
The report also indicates that the vaccine, developed by Pfizer in the United States and BioNTech in Germany, is successful against the coronavirus variant first identified in the United Kingdom. The researchers were unable to have an exact degree of effectiveness, but the strain was the most common virus in Israel at the time of the study.
The study didn't specify how the Pfizer vaccine would do against a particular variant, which is now widespread in South Africa and has been shown to decrease the effectiveness of other vaccines.
However, health authorities have warned that the pandemic will not be over until the whole planet has access to vaccines.
According to SCMP, over 217 million vaccine doses have been administered worldwide, with the vast majority going to high-income nations.
The vaccines are supposed to help the world finally recover from a pandemic that has killed over 2.4 million people, infected 112 million people, and wreaked havoc on the global economy.
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