Pfizer and BioNTech's Covid-19 Vaccine is 94% Effective

Pfizer and BioNTech's Covid-19 vaccine showed 94 percent efficacy. Vaccine effectiveness after the second dose was 94% for symptomatic Covid-19, 92% for documented infection, 87% for hospitalization and 92% for severe Covid-19.

In a real world study conducted in Israel involving 1.2 million people, researchers found that Pfizer and BioNTech's Covid-19 vaccine showed 94 percent efficacy.

The findings published in the New England Journal of Medicine showed that the vaccine performed as well as it did in the clinical trials.

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‘Vaccine effectiveness after the second dose was 94% for symptomatic Covid-19, 92% for documented infection, 87% for hospitalization and 92% for severe Covid-19.’

In this study, all persons who were newly vaccinated during the period from December 20, 2020, to February 1, 2021, were matched to unvaccinated controls in a 1:1 ratio according to demographic and clinical characteristics. Each study group included 596,618 persons.

Study outcomes included documented infection with SARS-CoV-2, symptomatic Covid-19, Covid-19-related hospitalization, severe illness, and death.

The researchers analyzed data from Clalit Health Services (CHS), the largest of four integrated health care organizations in Israel.

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That a vaccine will perform as well in the real world as it does in the highly controlled setting of a clinical trial is not a given, noted senior author Ran Balicer, Director of the Clalit Research Institute of Israel, health news site STAT reported on Wednesday.

Estimated vaccine effectiveness during the follow-up period starting seven days after the second dose was 92 percent for documented infection, 94 per cent for symptomatic Covid-19, 87 per cent for hospitalization, and 92 per cent for severe Covid-19, said the study.

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The researchers estimated that the vaccine effectiveness was similar for adults 70 years of age or older and for younger age groups for the same time period.

"This study estimates a high effectiveness of the BNT162b2 vaccine for preventing symptomatic Covid-19 in a noncontrolled setting, similar to the vaccine efficacy reported in the randomized trial," wrote the researchers.

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"Our study also suggests that effectiveness is high for the more serious outcomes: hospitalization, severe illness, and death."

Source-IANS