AstraZeneca's COVID-19 vaccine provided strong protection against sickness and eliminated hospitalizations and deaths from the disease across all age groups in a late-stage study in the United States, the company announced Monday.
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AstraZeneca said its experts did not identify any safety concerns related to the vaccine, including finding no increased risk of rare blood clots identified in Europe.
Although AstraZeneca's vaccine has been authorized in more than 50 countries, it has not yet been given the green light in the US – and has struggled to gain public trust amid a troubled rollout. The study comprised more than 30,000 volunteers, of whom two-thirds were given the vaccine while the rest got dummy shots.
In a statement, AstraZeneca said its COVID-19 vaccine was 79% effective at preventing symptomatic COVID-19 and was 100% effective in stopping severe disease and hospitalization, though it has not yet published full data. Investigators said the vaccine worked across all ages, including older people — something experts wanted better data on. Two doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine were given to people four weeks apart.
"These findings reconfirm previous results observed," said Ann Falsey, of the University of Rochester School of Medicine, who helped lead the trial. "It's exciting to see similar efficacy results in people over 65 for the first time."
Meanwhile, in Israel, 46,024 COVID tests processed from Sunday morning to Monday morning resulted in 669 new confirmed cases, or 1.5% of tests – the lowest Israel has seen since the end of November 2020, the Health Ministry reported Monday morning.
According to a report from the Corona Knowledge and Information Center, the reproduction rate in Israel stands at 0.62, meaning that a single confirmed carrier infects 0.62 other people.
As of Monday morning, the COVID death toll in Israel stood at 6,098. There were 15,765 active or symptomatic patients nationwide, and 816 COVID patients were hospitalized. Of the hospitalized patients, 529 were listed in serious condition (including 248 who were in critical condition and 211 who were on ventilators).
A total of 5,175,980 Israelis (55.66% of the population) have received a first dose of the COVID vaccines, and 4,563,045 have received both doses (49.07% of the population).
On Sunday, national coronavirus coordinator Professor Nachman Ash held a press briefing at which he said that Israel was about to face a "challenging time" and advised that the government put off decisions about further reopenings.
"The encouraging factor is that the decline [in cases of infections] is occurring despite the broad opening of the economy," Ash told reporters.
"The third stage [of exiting the lockdown] was two weeks ago and we still don't see signs of an increase in morbidity, not in the reproduction rate and not in the number of patients -- and that is very encouraging," he said.
On Monday, Ash discussed plans for Independence Day [which begins on the evening of April 14] in an interview on Army Radio, saying "We're talking about stages for entertainment. It might be too complicated, because most children aren't vaccinated. We might have to forgo it this year."
i24NEWS contributed to this report.
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