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The disease vaccine provides a significant reduction in the risk of severe illness from Covid-19, according to the Coronavirus Vaccination Campaign at Israel, which is way ahead of the rest of the world.
But for now no conclusions have been drawn on herd immunity.
Israel has electronic medical databases for its entire population, which helped it reach an agreement with the American pharmaceutical company Pfizer: that quickly provided its vaccine against covid-19 in the country, which in turn shared with the company data on the effect of vaccination.
About 3.2 million people (35% of the population) have been vaccinated in Israel since December, of which 1.8 million have received the second dose of the covid-19 vaccine, according to AMPE. A total of five million doses have been administered, first to the elderly.
At the same time, researchers are analyzing most of the data to understand the effects of vaccination, and the first question is how the vaccine performs outside of clinical trials.
In a recent study, scientists at the Maccabi Institute concluded that the first dose of vaccine reduces covid-19 infections by 51%, 13 to 14 days after administration.
In particular, the scientists compared the people’s medical data 12 days after their vaccination, a period in which the body’s immune response is still unclear, with this for the next 12 days.
“Two weeks after the first dose, we noticed significant but insufficient reduction of infections “ explained Gabriel Chodik, one of the scientists involved in the research. “We do not question the vaccine, but we emphasize the importance of the second dose,” he added.
Although some countries have decided to administer the first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine to as many vulnerable people as possible before starting the second, Israel, which has no problem receiving the vaccine, has chosen to administer the second dose three weeks after the first, as recommended by Pfizer.
Preliminary results show efficiency 92% A week after the second dose, the Maccabi Institute reported that of the 248,000 people who had received two doses of the vaccine, 66 had mild symptoms of Covid-19 without the need for treatment. The institute has not yet published a detailed scientific study on these data.
The mystery of immunity
Despite these results and emergency shutdown which has been in force in Israel since the end of December, the number of new cases of coronavirus remains high in the country, and the authorities attribute the phenomenon to violations of restrictive measures, mainly by Jews and ultra-Orthodox Arabs.
The Israeli government hopes to reduce the number of cases and especially in the number of patients, as the weeks pass and the vaccination campaign progresses.
But while the vaccine significantly reduces the risk of severe COVID-19 disease, the question that remains is whether it blocks transmission of the virus.
“We have to separate the two effects of the vaccine. The immediate result is that the vaccinated person is protected from the severe symptoms of covid-19,” explained Ran Baliser, head of the national committee of experts on covid-19 in Israel and a member of the Clalit Research Institute.
“The indirect effect is when a part of the population has been vaccinated, An epidemiological barrier is created that reduces contagion.. But this result is more difficult to assess, “he added.
“We know that the vaccine reduces the risk of disease, but we do not know if it also reduces contagion,” said Gabi Barbas, a researcher at the Weiszmann Institute of Sciences near Tel Aviv.
“The number of people who tested positive for coronavirus It really hasn’t decreased in a month and a half. Is this because the blockage is not observed or because the vaccine does not reduce the transmission (of the coronavirus)? “No one can say for now,” he concluded.
