A Discovery Health study has found that the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine reduced the risk of being hospitalised or dying from Covid-19 in SA by more than 90%.
Businesslive reports that the study found that people who had received both shots of the two-dose jab had a 92% lower risk of hospitalisation and 94% lower risk of death from Covid-19 than those who had not been vaccinated, up to three months after immunisation.
The study also showed that even a single shot offered significant protection, reducing the risk of hospitalisation by 73% and the risk of death by 79% after 14 days.
The report says the local findings are consistent with a US study published in The Lancet in October, which found the effectiveness of two doses of the Pfizer vaccine against hospitalisation remained high even at six months, at 93%.
Businesslive reports that the findings emphasise the importance for South Africa of rapidly scaling up coverage. By 3 November, South Africa had administered 22.8-million vaccine doses and fully immunised 31.7% of the adult population with either the two-dose Pfizer vaccine or the single-shot Johnson & Johnson jab.
Discovery Health CEO Ryan Noach said the South African study included more than 1.2 million adults who had received the Pfizer vaccine and covered the period from the start of the government’s vaccine rollout on 17 May to 23 September.
The report quotes Noach as saying: ‘This must be one of the largest [real-world] studies [into] Delta and vaccine effectiveness.’
Discovery Health chief commercial officer Ron Whelan said unvaccinated members were at five times higher risk of Covid-19 infection and 20 times higher risk of dying from complications than people who were fully vaccinated with the Pfizer jab.