Pfizer vaccine study results promising

U.K. vaccinations reducing hospitalizations and deaths

Public Health England has published findings from a study in progress on the real world effectiveness of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine, giving it high marks.

Among the study participants were 40,000 front line health care workers. The health agency says among that group those vaccinated with the Pfizer vaccine were 72% less likely to develop an infection after just one dose, with or without symptoms. That rose to 86% after the second shot.

Over 12,000 seniors over the age of 80 who took part in the study and who received the first Pfizer dose, protection from COVID symptoms was 57%, which rose to 85% after the second shot.

As for the vaccine’s impact on hospitalizations while admission numbers are declining across all age groups the drop is the fastest for those 75 years old and older. The study found seniors over 80 years of age who had the Pfizer vaccine were 40% less likely to be hospitalized than seniors who were not vaccinated.

When it came to mortality rates the study showed the Pfizer vaccine can be the difference between life and death. Public Health England says in the first COVID wave in the spring of 2020 seniors were much more likely to get infected and die while the death rate among the older population stayed higher for a much longer period of time. This time it found among those 80 years of age and older who had been vaccinated and became infected the chance of death was about 56% lower than an unvaccinated person in the same age group.

Public Health England says if you put the findings together it means a single dose of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine is over 75% effective at preventing coronavirus related hospitalization and deaths.

It is conducting a similar study on the impacts of the AstraZeneca vaccine and while its findings cannot be released yet the health agency says early signs indicate it provides similar protections after just a single dose.

The United Kingdom prioritized 1st dose vaccinations while delaying 2nd doses often well past the recommended timeline. To date almost 18-million first vaccine doses have been administered while just over 600,000 people are fully vaccinated.