• Thu. Mar 28th, 2024

Israeli Study Finds COVID Vaccines Halved Infections in Kids during Winter

Jul 2, 2022

A study was conducted on COVID vaccines in Israel, which is the largest one of its kind. It discovered that the vaccines were able to reduce the risk of infection amongst children during the winter wave in the country.

Moderate protection

According to the authors of the study, the protection offered by the vaccines was not of the high level that they initially provide upon administration. But, they declared that the protection was ‘moderate’ and better than some estimations made earlier, which stated that children were only being offered 12% protection from the vaccine against newer strains of the coronavirus.

Clalit Healthcare Services led the new study, which is one of the four healthcare providers in the country. The peer-reviewed study used the records of 94,728 children who had gotten vaccinated with the Pfizer vaccine and also used the same number of unvaccinated kids who had similar health profiles and age. The children who were involved in the study belonged to the 5 and 11 age group and it had been carried out at the peak of the winter wave in Israel.

Research results

According to researchers, two weeks after the children had received the second dose of the vaccine, they were 51% protected from becoming infected once more. There was 48% protection against COVID infection with symptoms.

One of the authors of the study, Prof. Ben Reis said that 48% to 51% figure was quite high. He said that while they had gotten used to seeing protection numbers in the 90s, but this was when vaccines had been initially introduced. However, he added that offering protection against half of illnesses and infections was also a real benefit.

Reis works at the Clalit Research Institute and Harvard Medical School as a senior researcher. He stated that the study would have an international impact. The New England Journal of Medicine had published the study.

Reis said that this was a large study on the effectiveness of Pfizer vaccines for kids and provides evidence to parents that can help them in making better decisions about getting their children vaccinated.

Vaccine effectiveness

Reis also added that when they were conducting their research, the effectiveness of the Pfizer vaccine for adults had already declined from 90% during the early days to 65.5% against the Omicron variant of the coronavirus.

According to Reis, the final picture showed that while the vaccine offered kids less protection as compared to adults, but it was not that dramatic. Moreover, Pfizer is also working on releasing vaccines that will have a higher level of effectiveness against other variants. Therefore, Reis said that the effectiveness of the vaccine would improve for kids and adults alike.

But, he did add that the evolving variants of the coronavirus were the primary issue in both children and adults alike. He asserted that the high effectiveness of the vaccines in the beginning had spoilt people, but there have been new variants, so it is understandable that effectiveness has declined, but it still remains impressive.

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