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Vaccines are rapidly preventing severe cases of COVID-19 among the most vulnerable members of society, an Israeli health care provider said.
The full effects of Pfizer’s vaccine are not expected to come until about a month after the first vaccine, but data from Israel, home to the world’s fastest vaccination campaign, has already shown there is a steep drop infections even before that point.
Attracting widespread international interest by sharing the first data, Maccabi Healthcare Services reported earlier this month that it had seen a 60% reduction in coronavirus infections three weeks after the administration of the first vaccine.
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But it was not clear whether the benefits were felt the same way by those with a propensity for mild infection and those who would be likely to take COVID-19 badly.
An Israeli receives a coronavirus vaccine at a Clalit vaccination center in Jerusalem on January 4, 2021 (Olivier Fitoussi / Flash90)
Now, Maccabi is starting to answer the question hospitals and health ministers around the world are anxiously asking, amid fears of health services collapse: How quickly will COVID-19 services start to fall. see the benefits of vaccination?
The decrease in hospital admissions is rapid after vaccination, suggests Maccabi in his latest data, finding that hospitalizations start to drop sharply from day 18 after people receive the first vaccine. Galia Rahav, head of infectious diseases at Israel’s largest hospital, Sheba Medical Center, called the data “very important.”
By day 23, or 2 days after the second vaccine, there is a 60% drop in hospitalizations among vaccinated people aged 60 and over, Maccabi revealed after following 50,777 patients. He compared their hospitalization rate at this point with their hospitalization rate shortly after receiving the vaccine, using 7-day moving averages.
Israeli professor Galia Rahav in Tel Aviv on June 22, 2020. (Yossi Aloni / Flash90)
“This is very important data,” Rahav, who is not linked to the study, told The Times of Israel. “This has an impact, because amid the high infection rates and the spread of variants, it’s hard to see from general numbers how vaccination is influencing things.
“By providing an overview of hospitalizations only among vaccinated elderly people, these data are invaluable.”
However, she warned that part of the drop could be due to a tendency for those newly vaccinated to adhere to lockdown rules, leading to a drop in infections and hospitalizations.
The new data also supports Maccabi’s earlier claim of a 60% drop in the infection rate after three weeks, indicating that he saw the same drop with a new sample comprising only the 60% age group. years and older.
Maccabi’s graph gives a real picture of the infection in Israel, showing that until day 13, those over 60 who were vaccinated had infection rates similar to those of the general population over 60. Then a gap opens and on day 23 there were 18 daily infections among the total 50,777, but only six among those vaccinated.
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