Vaccinations are rapidly repelling serious cases of COVID-19 among the most vulnerable members of society, an Israeli healthcare provider indicated.
The full effect of Pfizer’s vaccine will only kick in about a month after the first shot, but data from Israel, home to the world’s fastest vaccination campaign, has already shown that there is a sharp drop in infections even before this point.
Maccabi Healthcare Services reported earlier this month that international interest had been aroused by sharing early data, and that three weeks after the first shot was given, there had been a 60 percent drop in coronavirus infections.
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However, it was not clear whether those prone to mild infection and those likely to take COVID-19 poorly outweighed the benefits.
An Israeli man receives a coronavirus vaccine on January 4, 2021 at a Clalit vaccination center in Jerusalem. (Olivier Fitoussi / Flash90)
Now Maccabi is beginning to answer the question that hospitals and health ministers around the world are anxiously asking, amid fears of the deterioration of the health service: How soon will COVID-19 departments begin to see the benefits of vaccination?
The decline in hospital admissions is rapid after vaccination, Maccabi suggests in his latest data and finds that hospitalizations start to decline sharply from Day 18 after people get the first chance. Galia Rahav, head of infectious diseases at Israel’s largest hospital, Sheba Medical Center, described the data as ‘very important’.
By day 23, which is two days after the second shot, Maccabi had a 60% decrease in hospitalizations among vaccines older than 60, Maccabi revealed after monitoring 50,777 patients. It compared their hospitalization rate at that time with their hospitalization rate shortly after receiving the vaccination, using 7-day moving averages.
Israeli prof. Galia Rahav in Tel Aviv on June 22, 2020. (Yossi Aloni / Flash90)
“This is very important information,” Rahav, who is not involved in the study, told The Times of Israel. ‘It has an impact, because in the midst of the high infection rates and the spread of variants, it’s hard to see from general figures how the vaccination affects things.
“By providing insight into hospitalizations in just the elderly who have been vaccinated, this data is valuable.”
However, she warned that part of the decline could be due to the tendency for people who have been recently vaccinated to comply with the lock-in rules, causing a decrease in infection and hospitalization.
The new data also supports Maccabi’s earlier claim that the infection rate drops by 60% after three weeks, and reports that they have seen the same drop with a new sample containing only the age group of over 60.
The graph of Maccabi gives a real picture of infection in Israel, showing that up to day 13 vaccinated have older than 60 similar infection rates as the total population of over 60. Then there is a gap, and by day 23 there was there were 18 daily infections among the 50 777 persons, but only six among the vaccinated.