Two doses of Pfizer ‘are 99.96% effective’, Israel study finds

Almost all cases of Covid are prevented with two doses of the Pfizer vaccine, research shows.

Data collected from Israel – which is the world leader in vaccine deployment – revealed that only 0.04% of people vaccinated with both doses developed coronavirus.

Of 700,000 people who were vaccinated, only 300 contracted the virus later, with only 16 requiring hospital treatment, according to preliminary data released by Israeli health officials.

The vaccine also protects against the more infectious British variant of Covid-19, research suggests.

Professor Eyal Leshem, an Israeli infectious disease specialist, said the reports were “very good news”. He added: “The early results are pretty amazing.

Almost all cases of Covid are prevented with two doses of the Pfizer vaccine, research shows. Data collected from Israel – which is the world leader in vaccine deployment – revealed that only 0.04% of people vaccinated with both doses developed coronavirus. Pictured: A man receives a dose of the Pfizer / BioNTech vaccine on Tuesday in Tel Aviv, Israel

“ After one dose the cases went down drastically and after two it was only 0.4%.

“Time will tell, we still have to accumulate data, but these are very encouraging preliminary reports.

More than 30% of the Israeli population has received a vaccine, and several studies on its effectiveness are underway.

Professor Leshem added: “ On the one hand, we are seeing very high community transmission rates with thousands of cases every day – the highest rates we have seen since the start of the epidemic.

“But when we look specifically at these hundreds of thousands of vaccinated Israelis, they are not infected.

Pictured: Health workers from the Maccabi Health vaccination center administer doses of the Pfizer / BioNTech vaccine on Tuesday inside the parking lot of the Givatayim shopping mall in Tel Aviv, Israel

“ And even in the rare cases of infection, they suffer from mild illness – a handful only to get to the hospital, only a handful have suffered severe illness and had to be hospitalized.

“This is what we call real life, ecological proof of vaccine effectiveness – the high effectiveness of the vaccine.

The majority of those vaccinated were over 60 years old, which makes the results even more remarkable, he added.

Initial studies also found a significant reduction in cases among those who received a dose of the vaccine.

Israel is providing weekly updates of data on its vaccination campaign to Pfizer as part of a collaborative arrangement.

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