Tel Aviv: Israel’s top coronavirus drug has claimed that Pfizer’s first dose of the Covid vaccine is less effective than it was.
One of the medics who led the Covid-19 response in Israel was Dr. Nachman Ash said that the first installment of Jab did not cut the infection rate as he expected.
He told local media army radio, ‘Many people have been infected between the first and second injections of the vaccine, but it may take ten days or more for the immunity to kick in.
Real-world data from Israel’s world-beating rollout showed the first dose, with a 33 percent reduction in coronavirus cases after 14 to 21 days that people found. One of the top doctors in the country said that this was excellent news.
But the figure is lower than estimates by the British regulator, which said that it could prevent 89 percent of recipients from receiving Covid-19 symptoms.
However, Israeli data do not prove anything about the possible effects of Britain’s controversial 12-week hiatus. The country gives no more than three weeks between the first and second doses, during which time protection is expected to be at least the best – and the vaccine is not intended to prevent infection but severe illness and death.
Britain’s chief scientific adviser Sir Patrick Valence said that he expected all vaccines to be less effective in the real world. He said that Britain should ‘look very carefully’ at the figures during the vaccine rollout to see its effect.
Dr. Ash’s remarks came after Britain decided to lengthen the interval between the first and second doses from three weeks to 12 weeks sparked anger among scientists.
Pfizer’s data suggest that protection from Covid begins about 12 days after the first dose but that a single jab can only prevent 52 percent of cases of the disease, while two offer a 95 percent reduction. It provides no evidence that a single dose works for more than three weeks.
For this reason, the US pharmaceutical company refused to support Britain’s decision to change the dosing schedule, saying there is no evidence that it would work.
Dr. Ash suggests that the level of protection after the first dose is less than Pfizer’s 52 percent.
In Britain, Vaccine regulators have reported that MP Pfizer’s jab appeared to work so well after a single jab that he questioned whether another was necessary.
But Dr. Ash now claims that the vaccine does not work even after the first jab, despite the country moving ahead with the recommended two-dose strategy within three weeks.
The fact that people are not waiting more than three weeks for their second jab – as if they are in the UK – means that Dr. Ash will have only one week’s worth of data, on which the vaccine can be expected to be effective.
Documents provided to the FDA in the US indicate that protection from the Pfizer jab did not kick in clinical trials until approximately two weeks after the first dose.
This reappeared in real-world data in Israel, where the positivity of coronavirus tests declined by 33 percent in a fortnight among those who were vaccinated.
Ran Balisar, a World Health Organization consultant and Israel’s largest medical provider, Clatit’s top doctor, said: ‘We saw that there was no difference between vaccination and invalidity until after the 14-day vaccination,’ Sky reports.
‘But after the 14-day vaccination, the vaccinated group saw a 33 percent drop in positivity, not in the unrelated … This is excellent news.’
A 33 percent reduction in positive tests – believed to be an accurate measurement of Covid-19 symptoms – claimed to be less than 89 percent of UK vaccine regulators, which could be possible with a single dose.
When asked about the possibility of this low effectiveness in a Q&A on Sky News this morning, the UK’s Chief Scientific Advisor Sir Patrick Valence said: ‘We need to look at this very carefully. We just need to measure the numbers they wanted.’
The Joint Committee on Immunization and Immunization (JCVI) has argued that a single Pfizer vaccine dose gave a high degree of protection in clinical trials.
JCVI’s Covid-19 vaccination chief Professor Wei Shen Lim told MPs in Parliament’s Science Committee last week: ‘We noted that the vaccine had received a very high level of protection after the first dose.
We also considered whether the first dose provided sufficient protection that one might eventually consider using a single dose.
‘But we also realized that at the time [before Christmas] there were insufficient data to suggest a single-dose diet.
‘Still, JCVI’s advice is that the schedule is a two-dose schedule, which has not changed – we maintain that the two-dose schedule is the correct schedule – the difference being that we are more permissible for the second dose. can be given.’