A pair of observational Israeli studies yesterday in the New England Journal of Medicine find that the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine booster is highly protective, with one estimating much lower rates of infection and severe illness, and the other finding a 90% lower death rate.Infections 10 times lower among boostedIn the first study, from Jul 30 to Oct 10, 2021, a period marked by dominance of the Delta (B1617.2) variant, a team led by scientists from the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot analyzed data from the Israel Ministry of Health database.
The study involved 4,696,865 residents 16 years and older who had received two doses of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine at least 5 months before enrollment.Israel rolled out boosters in July