TEL AVIV, May 6 (The Guardian) - Two doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine have proved more than 95% effective against infection, hospitalisation and death from Covid-19 in Israel, the country with the highest proportion of its population vaccinated in the world, research has found.

One shot of the vaccine was partially effective, offering 58% protection against infection, 76% against hospitalisation, and 77% against death. The authors of the observational study in the Lancet medical journal say this shows the importance of having the second shot.

Israel has used only the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine, which the company supplied on the understanding that data from the vaccination programme would be published to demonstrate its real-world efficacy.

The country had a national lockdown from 27 December 2020 until 7 March 2021 because of a big surge in infections, which peaked in January. By 3 April, 72% of adults over 16 and 90% of the over-65s had received two doses of the vaccine. As in the UK, the dominant strain of the virus has been the “Kent” variant, B117. Some cases of the “South African” variant, B1351, have been found latterly, but too few to be taken into account.

By seven days after the second dose, the vaccine was giving people 95.3% protection against infection and 96∙7% protection against death. Protection against symptomatic and asymptomatic infection was 97.0% and 91.5%, respectively. Protection against hospital admission was 97.2% overall. By 14 days after the second dose, the protection had risen slightly further.