AFP – Initial data from the Israeli coronavirus vaccination campaign shows that the Pfizer / BioNTech vaccine protects against serious illnesses, but it remains unclear whether it slows down transmissions or indicates progress towards achieving collective immunity, experts say .
The Jewish state is carrying out what is widely described as the world’s fastest per capita vaccination campaign, closely watched by experts around the world.
While many countries are struggling with acquisitions, Israel has made remarkable progress since the vaccines were launched in December.
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So far, it has given the first of two recommended doses of Pfizer jabs to about 35% of its nine million population. About 1.8 million also received the second jab, especially those over 60.
People receive vaccine COVID-19, in a sports hall transformed into a vaccination center in Hod Hasharon, on February 2, 2021. (Miriam Alster / Flash90)
The Ministry of Health announced that as of this Thursday, all Israelis aged 16 and over will be able to make an appointment to be vaccinated, breaking the age limit of their previous minimum of 35.
In a statement, the ministry emphasized on Wednesday that Israel’s four health care providers must still focus their efforts on inoculating people aged 50 and over, as well as Israelis who are left with no way out.
Israel secured its substantial stock by paying over market price and entering into a data sharing agreement with Pfizer.
The agreement stipulates that Israel, which has one of the most sophisticated medical data systems in the world, will share information in real time with Pfizer about the impact of the vaccine, including progress towards collective immunity.
Direct vs. indirect protection
Ran Balicer, chairman of Israel’s national panel of experts on COVID-19, told AFP that it was crucial to distinguish between the two impacts of the vaccine.
The first is “the direct effect” of vaccinated people becoming “protected against symptomatic and serious illnesses,” he said.
Professor Ran Balicer, head of innovation at Clalit, Israel’s largest healthcare provider, in Tel Aviv on June 10, 2020 (EMMANUEL DUNAND / AFP)
The second, “indirect effect,” refers to the vaccine that provides sufficient immunity to enough people to form an “epidemiological barrier” against transmission, he said.
Balicer, also the director of innovation at Clalit, Israel’s largest health maintenance organization (HMO), said the data shows that the vaccine reduces serious illnesses, but the issue of transmission remains open.
Gabi Barbash, a prominent public health expert currently at the Weizmann Institute of Science, agrees.
“We know that vaccines are decreasing the incidence of serious illnesses. That’s it, ”he told AFP. “We don’t know if vaccines are minimizing transmission.”
‘Phase IV’
In November, Pfizer announced that Phase III tests had shown that its vaccine was 95 percent effective against the virus.
Given the seriousness of the pandemic, he received regulatory approval through an accelerated testing process, which made Israel’s more comprehensive data even more valuable.
The country’s Maccabi Institute for Innovation and Research, linked to an HMO of the same name, published an article this week that it described as “the first and largest Phase IV study on vaccine effectiveness (Pfizer-BioNTech)”.
Clalit and Maccabi are two of Israel’s four health plans, which collectively provide health care to the entire population. HMOs are directly responsible for vaccination and data collection on their impact.
A man receives a COVID-19 vaccine in Jerusalem on February 2, 2021 (Yonatan Sindel / Flash90)
Maccabi compared the incidence of COVID-19 in the 12 days after the subjects received their first Pfizer injection with the incidence of 13 to 24 days after the injection.
He found a 51 percent reduction in the incidence of laboratory-confirmed infections in the last period.
“Two weeks after the first dose, you see a significant reduction in infection, but it is not complete,” Gabriel Chodick, co-author of the Maccabi report, told AFP.
In addition, Israel is testing only those with symptoms of coronavirus, not a random sample of the entire vaccinated population. Therefore, it does not have comprehensive data on the number of vaccinated people with the virus without symptoms.
Two jabs
Pfizer recommends administering your vaccine in two doses, three weeks apart.
Israel has sufficient stocks to follow these recommendations, which means it has no data on whether the protective effect of just one jab increases after 24 days in the absence of a second jab.
Maccabi also released preliminary data on the impact of the second jab.
He showed that of 248,000 people studied one week after receiving their second injection, only 66 mild coronavirus infections were recorded.
Although these numbers point to almost complete protection, Maccabi emphasized that these data have not been fully analyzed.
Ultra-Orthodox Jewish men attended the funeral of the late Rabbi Meshulam Dovid Soloveitchik, held in violation of coronavirus rules, on January 31, 2021, in Jerusalem. (Yonatan Sindel / Flash90)
Despite its vaccination campaign, Israel continued to register daily cases above 5,000, despite a national blockade in force since December 27.
But enforcement and enforcement of the blockade has been uneven, notably among ultra-Orthodox Jews who persistently violated public security rules during the pandemic.
“If you look at the number of new positive corona cases identified per day, it hasn’t decreased in the past month and a half,” said Barbash.
“This is because the block is not a [real] lockdown, or is it because the vaccine is not minimizing transmission? Nobody can say that. “