It’s one thing to test a vaccine, and another to see it in action in the real world. More than two months after the first vaccines were authorized in the U.K. and U.S., strong data have emerged showing that the shots are doing what they are supposed to do: protect people from COVID-19.
In a study published Feb. 24 in the New England Journal of Medicine, researchers in Israel and the U.S. report that the vaccine made by Pfizer-BioNTech was highly effective in protecting against infection with the COVID-19 virus, lowering people’s chances of getting sick with the disease—especially severe disease—and dropping COVID-19 hospitalization rates. The data, says Marc Lipsitch, professor of epidemiology at the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health and co-author of the paper, are “close to the best possible news.”
At time.com
