The Health Ministry reported Friday morning that of the 146,642 Israelis it screened for the coronavirus in the past 24 hours, 36,858 (25.13%) tested positive.
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There are 326,756 active patients in the country with 2,479 patients hospitalized. Of those, 1,111 – 346 are critically ill, 264 are on ventilators and 23 are connected to ECMO machines. Currently, 44,645 Israelis are in quarantine.
Thus far, 684,848 Israelis have been vaccinated with four doses, 4,452,732 with three, 6,110,026 with two, and 6,694,595 have received one shot.
Israel has reported 3,347,657 COVID cases, including 9,399 deaths, since the outbreak of the pandemic in March 2020.
Meanwhile, Israeli researchers have found that the number of SARS-CoV-2 antibodies falls in both previously infected and vaccinated people, but the performance of antibodies improves only after previous infection and not vaccination.
This groundbreaking finding, led by Dr. Carmit Cohen of the Sheba Medical Center, will be presented at the European Congress of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases in April.
Cohen and her colleagues analyzed antibody-induced immune response in 130 recovered individuals for up to a year and compared it to 402 matched individuals who were double-vaccinated with the Pfizer vaccine but never had COVID-19.
The researchers found that the number of antibodies presents a month after vaccination was higher than in patients who had recovered from COVID-19. However, these numbers declined more steeply in the vaccinated group.
While the avidity – antibody performance quality – index was higher in vaccinated individuals than in recovered patients initially, avidity did not significantly change over time in vaccinated individuals but increased gradually in recovered patients.
This could explain why double-vaccinated individuals who never contracted COVID-19 are more likely to experience infection after six months.
The study also found that, contrary to expectations, antibodies of recovered patients with a body-mass index of 30 or higher (in the obese range) were higher at all time points when compared with those with a BMI under 30 (overweight to normal weight range). The obese people who had been previously infected were, therefore, better protected against future infection.
Of all recovered patients, 42 (36%) experienced long COVID, including mental health (5%), neurological (9%), cardiovascular (5%) and respiratory (31%) symptoms.
The authors conclude: "While the number of antibodies decreases with time in both COVID-19 recovered patients and vaccinated individuals, the quality of antibodies increases following infection but not after vaccination. These results provide specific characteristics of the immune response that may explain the differential protection against COVID-19 in previously infected and vaccinated individuals."
Another Israeli study – published in the medical journal JAMA Pediatrics on Thursday – found that Pfizer's COVID vaccines are safe for human fetuses and not associated with harmful effects on newborns.
The research is based on observations of 17,000 pregnant women who were vaccinated and 7,000 who were not between March and October 2021.
Scientists looked at preterm births, hospitalizations, congenital disabilities, and infant mortality, finding no statistical difference between the two groups in any area.
Infant mortality stood at 0.1% in both groups, and premature births were 4.2% for babies whose mothers were vaccinated and 4.8 % for those whose mothers were not.
Defects were 1.5% for those vaccinated and 2.1% for those not vaccinated, and hospitalizations among newborns were 5.1% for vaccinated mothers and 5.3 % for those not vaccinated.
The study also shows that these results were valid for 2,000 newborns whose mothers were vaccinated during the first trimester – considered the most vulnerable period for fetuses.
JNS.org, Israel21c and i24NEWS contributed to this report.
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