By Michael Erman
(Reuters) – Pfizer Inc and BioNTech SE said on Wednesday that actual data from Israel indicates that their COVID-19 vaccine is 94% effective in preventing asymptomatic infections, meaning that the vaccine can significantly reduce transmission.
The companies also said that the latest analysis of the Israeli data shows that the vaccine was 97% effective in preventing symptomatic diseases, serious illnesses and death. This is in line with the 95% efficacy reported by Pfizer and BioNTech from the vaccine’s clinical trial in December.
The analysis also shows real-world evidence for the efficacy of the vaccine against a highly contagious variant of COVID-19 first discovered in Britain known as B.1.1.7. More than 80% of the samples tested during the analysis were variant B.1.1.7.
There were only a limited number of infections in Israel caused by the so-called South African variant – known as B.1.351 – so that they could not evaluate the effectiveness of the vaccine against this variant.
Israel is the world leader in its vaccination, thanks in part to an agreement to share data with Pfizer and BioNTech. According to data from the Ministry of Health, approximately 55% of the 9 million residents received at least one dose of Pfizer / BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine, and 43% received both doses.
According to the analysis, unvaccinated individuals were 44 times more likely to develop COVID-19 symptomatically and 29 times more likely to die from COVID-19 than those who received the vaccine.
The data, collected between 17 January and 6 March, has not yet been peer-reviewed.
The Ministry of Health of Israel previously found that the Pfizer vaccine developed with the German BioNTech reduces infection, including in asymptomatic cases, by 89.4% and in symptomatic cases by 93.7%. This was in data collected between 17 January and 6 February.
(Reporting by Michael Erman; Edited by Toby Chopra, Alexandra Hudson)