Israel’s Helsinki Committee, the national oversight committee which authorizes medical research and clinical trials on humans, said it is investigating whether it has the obligation to approve and supervise an agreement under which Israel will provide information and medical data to the Pfizer company about its vaccine against the coronavirus.
On Sunday, in response to rumors about the deal which brought hundreds of thousands of extra vaccine doses to Israel, the country’s health ministry made public a redacted copy of its deal with Pfizer to provide publicly available and de-anonymized data so that the company can “measure and analyze epidemiological data arising from the product rollout to determine whether herd immunity is achieved after reaching a certain percentage of vaccination coverage in Israel.”
The Helsinki Committee announced on Monday that it will work to determine whether the data being provided to Pfizer constitutes a clinical trial. To do so, it must understand what type of data will be transferred to the company. If the deal amounts to a clinical trial then the committee would be required to supervise it.
If the committee decided to reject the agreement it could possibly block the transfer of information to Pfizer.
Prof. Eytan Friedman, chairman of the Helsinki Committee, told the Israeli business daily Calcalist that: “It is vital to make clear that we support the Covid-19 vaccination effort, only that we ask that the rights of Israeli citizens are protected under the deal struck between Israel and U.S drugmaker Pfizer.” He has requested an “urgent meeting” with the health ministry.