Pfizer’s Covid jab provides 95% protection: study

PARIS: The largest real-world study yet of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine on Thursday confirmed that the jab provided more than 95% protection against Covid-19, but found that the level dropped when people received just one of the two prescribed doses.

The authors of the research from Israel’s national vaccination campaign said it showed real-world proof that the pandemic could be ended by rapid, global vaccination programmes.

An analysis of public health data from Israel - one of the countries with the highest proportion of fully-vaccinated adults - showed the vaccine was extremely effective in protecting even elderly individuals at a time when the more infectious English variant was dominant, according to the results published in the Lancet journal.

By the start of April, nearly 5 million people in Israel had received two doses of the Pfizer jab, more than 70% of the population.

The study found that two doses conveyed 95.3% protection against infection and 96.7% protection against death seven days after the second dose. After 14 days, that protection increased to 96.5% and 98%, respectively.

But the protection was considerably lower when people received a single vaccine dose. Between 7-14 days after the first dose, protection against infection was found to be 57.7%, and protection against death 77%.

The authors said that one dose may provide a shorter window of protection, especially in an environment where new viral variants emerge.