‘Real world’ study finds Pfizer coronavirus vaccine 94 per cent effective
- Peer-reviewed research involving 1.2 million people in Israel confirmed that mass immunisation can break Covid-19 transmission
- Meanwhile, British researchers found that people who received two doses of the Pfizer shot are generating strong antibody responses
The Israeli study, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, also showed there is likely a strong protective benefit against infection, a crucial element in breaking onward transmission.
“This is the first peer-reviewed large scale evidence for the effectiveness of a vaccine in real world conditions,” said Ben Reis, a researcher at Harvard Medical School and one of the paper’s authors.
It involved almost 600,000 people who received the shots and an equal number who had not but were closely matched to their vaccinated counterparts by age, sex, geographic, medical and other characteristics.
The efficacy against symptomatic Covid-19 was 94 per cent seven or more days after the second dose – very close to the 95 per cent achieved during Phase 3 clinical trials.
In England, researchers on Thursday said that people who have received two doses of the Pfizer vaccine are generating strong antibody responses as the shot is rolled out.
An Imperial College London survey showed 87.9 per cent of people over the age of 80 tested positive for antibodies after two doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, rising to 95.5 per cent for those under the age of 60 and 100 per cent in those aged under 30.
“Although there is some fall-off in positivity with age, at all ages, we get that very good response to two doses of the vaccine,” Paul Elliott, Chair in Epidemiology and Public Health Medicine, Imperial College London, told reporters.