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A vial containing Pfizer’s BioNTech COVID 19 vaccine, at a vaccination center in Modi’in on Jan. 12, 2021. PHOTO BY YOSSI ALONI/FLASH90.
ISRAEL'S FAST VACCINE ROLLOUT WHAT THE WORLD CAN LEARN ABOUT IMMUNITY FROM THE PFIZER BIONTECH VACCINE'S EFFECTS |
BY ABIGAIL KLEIN LEICHMAN, ISRAEL21C VIA JNS
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ore than 1.3 million Israelis have already received both doses of the COVID-19 vaccine from Pfizer BioNTech. The extraordinarily fast and organized vaccination campaign in Israel is unmatched per capita anywhere in the world. By design, this fast rollout is providing Pfizer — and the rest of us — with the first critical real-world data on brand new mRNA vaccines. This type of vaccine instructs cells to make a “spike” protein that triggers the immune system to produce antibodies against the matching spike protein on the surface of the SARS CoV 2 coronavirus, which causes COVID-19. “Pfizer knows the data they will get from Israel is good and accurate. They see our rate of vaccination is very efficient so they can report post marketing data to the FDA quickly,” says microbiology expert Dr. Natan Keller, vice chairman of Sheba Medical Center’s Institutional Review Board 22
L’CHAIM SAN DIEGO MAGAZINE • FEBRUARY 2021
Committee and past president of the Israeli Society of Infectious Diseases. FDA emergency use approval for the Pfizer vaccine was based on a study of 24,000 vaccine recipients and 24,000 placebo recipients, says Keller. Israel now has data from more than 2.7 million who got at least one dose and the number increases by about 100,000 per day. ISRAEL21c gathered information from local experts and national health maintenance organizations (HMOs) on what Israel has learned about the vaccine and its efficient distribution. WHAT WE KNOW
Pfizer BioNTech’s studies showed the mRNA vaccines to be about 95 percent effective within a certain amount of time after the second dose. “We know Pfizer’s data was quite accurate,” says Keller. “Effectiveness is in the high 90s after the second dose — Pfizer says eight days, but I recommend 14 days for full immunity.”
Studies from the Clalit and Maccabi HMOs support Keller’s recommendation. Even so, Maccabi saw a 60 percent drop in COVID-19 hospitalizations among members aged 60 and over as little as two days after the second dose. “Based on our data, we know most people infected after the first dose were infected within the first two weeks of vaccination,” says Keller. “We also know that statistically, the disease is less severe in the vaccinated [even one dose] than in the non vaccinated.” Indeed, Maccabi reported that although 20 members got infected with COVID-19 after the second dose — out of 128,600 in total — they experienced only mild symptoms and recovered at home. Also encouraging was a Sheba study that found that employees who received both doses had more antibodies against the novel coronavirus than did recovered COVID-19 patients.
