Pfizer CEO declares: Israel is now the world's coronavirus laboratory

February 27, 2021   

Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla admitted that Israel has become the "world's laboratory" when it comes to the company's coronavirus vaccine. In an interview with NBC, Bourla said: "I think Israel is the world's laboratory right now, because they're only using our vaccine right now and they've vaccinated a very large portion of the population." He added: "I think with the data from the field, particularly from Israel, and because they're moving quickly toward vaccinating the entire population, I think we'll be able to get indications within a month or two of whether those who get vaccinated can infect others." He noted that "what we've seen is that the effectiveness of the vaccine according to the real-world data is increasing every moment, after the second vaccination. "That is, there is a difference in the effectiveness of the vaccine between 7 days after the second vaccination and 14 days after it, and the effectiveness after the second dose is comparable and even surpasses what we saw in the clinical trials." Ministry of Health data shows that 4,649,709 Israelis were vaccinated with the first dose and 3,274,648 of them have already been vaccinated with the second dose. This week, a study by 'Clalit' was published, which showed that a week after receiving the second dose of the vaccine, 94% was effective in preventing symptomatic infection and 92% was effective in preventing severe disease.