A study of 9,000 health care workers at Sherpa Medical Center found an 85% reduction in the number of people with symptoms of Covid-19 within 15-28 days of the first dose of the vaccine.
BioNTech/Pfizer’s (Pfizer) novel coronavirus pneumonia (COVID-19, or 2019 coronavirus disease) vaccine was 85% effective after the first dose, according to a new Israeli study, supporting the decision made in the UK to extend the interval between doses.
The study of 9,000 health care workers found an 85 percent reduction in the number of people with symptoms of Covid-19 between 15 and 28 days after the first dose of vaccine.
The study was conducted by Sheba Medical Center, a leading research hospital, and was published in the Lancet. The study found that the vaccine also had an impact on asymptomatic infections, reducing all positive cases by 75 percent.
To protect the UK population as quickly as possible, the UK has been extending the interval between doses – including the BioNTech/Pfizer vaccine and the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine – with 12 weeks between the first and second doses. 12 weeks between the first and second dose.
But BioNTech and Pfizer say there is no evidence that the longer interval works. Other countries, including Israel and the United States, are seeking stricter adherence to the clinically tested three-week interval for vaccination.
“This groundbreaking study supports the British government’s decision to begin giving citizens a single dose of the vaccine,” said Arnon Afek, deputy director of the Sheba Medical Center
Sheba Medical Center, Israel.
Israel is a world leader in vaccination against the new crown. It follows a deal with Pfizer that gave Israel access to more vaccines on the condition that research be made available when the small country achieves herd immunity.
Before Sheba Medical Center published its study, an analysis in February showed a decline in the number of new crown cases and hospitalizations among the age group vaccinated in Israel, even though many people received only one shot.
The Sherpa Medical Center study also builds on a laboratory study that found that 91 percent of physicians and nurses developed a strong antibody response three weeks after the first dose of vaccine.
Gili Regev-Yochay, director of the Infection Prevention and Control Unit at Sheba Medical Center, said the vaccine was “very effective “.
She said, “Everyone behaves pretty much the same …… so you can see how that means it’s obviously true.”
The advantage of using health care workers as study subjects, she said, is that they all follow the same testing procedures, so the data is not biased by who decides to get tested.
But the study focuses on a younger population, who may show a stronger immune response. And because the study only followed health care workers for a few weeks before the second dose of vaccine, it did not produce data on how long the protection provided by the first dose would last.
However, Regev-Yohacher said she would assume that the immune response would last “a long Time. She stated, “If it works well for four weeks, then there’s no question that you can delay the second shot a little bit longer.”
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