Israel's swift vaccination rollout has made it the largest real-world study of Pfizer's coronavirus vaccine. Results are trickling in, and they are promising. Older and at-risk groups, the first to be inoculated, are seeing a dramatic drop in illnesses.
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Among the first fully-vaccinated group there was a 53% reduction in new cases, a 39% decline in hospitalizations and a 31% drop in severe illnesses from mid-January until Feb. 6, Eran Segal, a data scientist at the Weizmann Institute said.
Video: Reuters
More will be known in two weeks, as teams analyze vaccine effectiveness in younger groups of Israelis, as well as targeted populations such as people with diabetes, cancer, and pregnant women.
More than a third of the population, 3,683,826 Israelis, have been fully vaccinated, 2,325,792 have been inoculated with the first dose.
Meanwhile, 5,540 Israelis have tested positive for the coronavirus, the Health Ministry reported Thursday morning. There are currently 67,808 active cases in the country. Some 1,027 Israelis are hospitalized in serious condition, 387 are in critical condition and 315 are on ventilators.
Nevertheless, according to National Security Council data, 1,027 constitutes the lowest number of serious cases in more than a month.
"We are beginning to see the impact of the vaccination campaign on coronavirus morbidity," Deputy Health Minister Yoav Kisch said. "I believe the number will continue to drop and we will reach less than a thousand daily serious cases."
The big question is whether vaccines can eradicate the pandemic.
Data from past decades suggest that viruses become endemic and seasonal, Michal Linial, a professor of molecular biology and bioinformatics at Hebrew University said. She predicted this coronavirus would become far less aggressive. "The virus is not going anywhere," she concluded.
Senior epidemic experts estimate that people would be required to get vaccinated against COVID-19 once a year, just like the flu vaccine. The main reason behind the need to get vaccinated annually is the constant mutation of the virus, Christine Billings, a pandemic response manager at Jefferson County Public Health, explained.
Just like any other vaccine lasts a year, so does Pfizer's, Executive Director Dr. Mark Johnson added, noting that the elderly might need to receive two vaccinations a year as their immune systems require more strengthening.
At the same time, the Health Ministry is finalizing its plan to encourage more Israelis to get vaccinated by opening certain leisure and culture venues shortly. The ministry's plan is to limit access to restaurants, gyms, cultural and sports events for those who did not get vaccinated, while allowing free entrance for the inoculated who possess a so-called green passport. Access will also be available to Israelis who have tested negative for COVID in the last 48 hours.
In an attempt to encourage more Israelis to get inoculated, the Health Ministry might charge Israelis who refuse to get vaccinated for their COVID tests and reduce the number of testing sites.
Health Minister Yuli Edelstein spoke of legislation that would enable employers to prevent unvaccinated employees from working at the office. The minister warned that the rule might apply to the education system as well.
In the meantime, US government researchers found that two masks are better than one in slowing coronavirus spread, but health officials stopped short of recommending that everyone double up.
The researchers found that wearing one mask – surgical or cloth – blocked around 40% of the particles coming toward the head that was breathing in. When a cloth mask was worn on top of a surgical mask, about 80% were blocked. When both the exhaling and inhaling heads were double-masked, more than 95% of the particles were blocked, John Brooks, a doctor at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said.
Discussions about double-masking and higher-quality masks are important, Dr. Isaac Bogoch, an infectious diseases scientist at the University of Toronto said. "But if a significant proportion of your population isn't wearing a mask in the first place, then you're having the wrong conversation," he added.
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