Pfizer vaccine efficacy drops in Israel as delta variant spreads

[LovingA2andMI]

Source: Telegraph UK

The efficacy of the Pfizer BioNTech vaccine in preventing Covid-19 infections has declined by nearly a third in Israel largely due to the spread of the delta variant, data from the country’s health ministry suggests.

The vaccine had a 64 per cent efficacy rate from early June until early July, the latest figures show, down from 94 per cent a month earlier. The decrease coincides with a period in which the government reversed coronavirus restrictions and the delta variant spread through the country.

On Monday, Israel reported the highest rate of new infections since the start of its most recent outbreaks, with the ministry recording 343 new cases over the past 24 hours.

In the past fortnight 90 per cent of new cases have been caused by the delta variant, which is more than twice as contagious as the original strain. Recent data has shown that over half of new cases have been detected in fully vaccinated patients.

Read more: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2021/07/05/pfizer-vaccine-efficacy-drops-israel-delta-variant-spreads/

[tanyev]

1. Great. It's going to be interesting to see what happens in the U.S.

after all the travel and events of this weekend.

[Siwsan]

2. This possibility is why I have not stopped wearing a mask when I'm in public buildings

And probably will continue to wear one for the rest of the year, if not longer.

[I_UndergroundPanther]

4. Thankful I got the moderna

Yeah I will be wearing my mask indoors indefinitely too.
If it's going to be crowded or unvaxxed people there I will do double masking.

[Ford_Prefect]

17. The story is that none of the vaccines resists the Delta variant well.

You can still become ill if not seriously so. The asymptomatic infections among vaccinated people can still do serious damage along with being passed on to the rest of us.

[KPN]

11. Ditto here - and the fact that I live in a rural county that has one of the lowest vaccination rates

in my State -- Oregon. Frigging idiot tRumpists!

[Siwsan]

22. My county has been sitting at about 42% fully vaccinated

Unfortunately, I doubt it's going to grow much. I'm just waiting to hear about a spike due to the Delta variant.

[ananda]

21. Same.

...

[PortTack]

3. Not the news I wanted to hear

[moriah]

5. I'm hopeful hospitalization-prevention efficacy is higher than 64%.

I live in one of the states with very few people vaccinated, where nobody is going to mask in public if they aren't forced to unless there's air conditioning for at least the next two months, and since all shots have failure rates I knew from the start that I might still get COVID even only interacting with vaccinated people in small groups and not yet working to overcome my pre-pandemic agoraphobia.

So even though I got my shot as soon as I could, my main metric for "working" was whether it would prevent me from getting an infection serious enough to require hospitalization -- or if I was hospitalized, that it was because the infection set off my asthma or I got a secondary bacterial pneumonia (common sequalae for me from flu/colds/crud) and not because of ARDS.

(If this is stated in the article, sorry I missed it -- paywall).

[Strelnikov_]

8. It is

But the vaccine is still conferring strong protection against severe symptoms of the virus, with hospitalization rates remaining low. The ministry’s data shows the vaccine’s efficacy in preventing hospitalization was 93 per cent from June 6 to July 3, compared to a 98 per cent rate in the previous period.

But with the number in the US not vaxed, still a disaster in the making for the health care system.

[moriah]

15. Yep, especially if the Israel stats are based on infections bad enough to make....

.... vaccinated people go to the doctor -- even with adding extensive contact tracing/testing for antibodies as well as active infections among vaccinated contacts -- then it means it's probably a coin toss whether or not the vaccinated in low-vaccination-rate states will function as "COVID Mary's" for Delta.

I appreciate your reference and pulls from the main article for the data I wasn't seeing.

As I said, I feel bad here that, as a vaccinated person hanging with other vaccinated people (there were all of 3 of us, including me, in total but that's the closest thing to social interaction I've really had since all this started) I could still end up spreading the virus. I will continue to mask in businesses, even if now that they removed almost all mandates from everywhere (even for employees) here I get weird looks.

At the same time, I feel like eventually a part of me is going to get callous towards those who refuse to get the vaccine, insofar as how I live my own life when the air outside is soup and there's not any AC. I dealt with it last summer mainly by avoidance, and that's what I'll try again this summer. I'm hopeful that the vaccine will have full FDA approval by the fall, so those who have been saying they don't want to get a vaccine without being eligible for the Compensation Fund should they be in the tiny minority of ppl who have side effects will not have that excuse anymore....

But eventually, yes, I'm going to support the right of others to choose to die instead of get a shot, or at least not enable their failure to get one by making myself miserable NEXT summer.

[Blues Heron]

6. Over half in fully vaxed patients

Delta is nothing to take lightly- keep masking and distancing!

[Scrivener7]

20. 55% of new cases were fully vaccinated.

https://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=15593276

These figures are in line with ministry data that show that many of the new cases are among people who have been vaccinated, while the number of serious cases is rising much more slowly, Ynet said. Last Friday, 55% of the newly infected had been vaccinated, the website said

[Strelnikov_]

7. Here is the 'good news' part:

But the vaccine is still conferring strong protection against severe symptoms of the virus, with hospitalization rates remaining low. The ministry’s data shows the vaccine’s efficacy in preventing hospitalization was 93 per cent from June 6 to July 3, compared to a 98 per cent rate in the previous period.

And the interesting part:

After recently reimposing an indoor mask rule for public spaces, Prime Minister Naftali Bennett is scheduled to meet Health Minister Nitzan Horowitz on Monday to discuss the latest outbreak and whether to advise a third booster shot for certain demographics.
Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla has said people will “likely” need a third dose of a Covid-19 vaccine within 12 months of getting fully vaccinated.

So, if this data from Israel holds, the US impact as I see it:

- With Delta, vaccinated will be well protected from the worst effects (hospitalization), however

- Vaccinated, due to the US dropping all other countermeasures, will result in more 'super-spreaders' (asymptomatic or mildly ill).

- Unless the CDC/State Governments re-institute countermeasures, the US is setting up for a major surge this fall among the un-vaccinated.

- Considering the US vaccination rate, there are more than enough un-vaccinated to overwhelm the US health care system during the fall surge.

Like many of the experts seem to be implying, the US pulled the countermeasures too soon.

On-edit: All just in time for when schools/universities open without any countermeasures. Gonna be a rough ride.

[Merlot]

9. I wish they'd give a definition of "highly transmissible"

I've read articles saying that masks and social distancing don't even work with the delta variant. Is there an official statement on what is effective (aside from vax) to protect from delta?

[moriah]

12. This might help.

https://www.bbc.com/news/health-57431420

The common cold has an R0 value (the average number of people an infected person infects) of 2-3 from what I can see on Google. That BBC article says the flu has a far lower R0 value than the common cold, but constantly mutates even with our shots for it.

While chickenpox isn't in that list, it has an R0 value of 10-12 in non-immune people (and evolved enough with humanity to not cause as much damage as measles or smallpox, the two that seem to have been the oldest but still never evolved to co-exist with humans as chickenpox did by living inside its host for the rest of that host's life and be caught in childhood).

Still, it's also new and doesn't have "check systems" to make sure that each virus copy made is correct -- in a way, it's like it's doing an experiment on humanity with each new person it infects. That virus blew through an entire low-vaccination country that is quite populous, and did it FAST, learning how to better infect us with every person it went through. Evolution at work, for those who don't think evolution can mimic intentional design.

And now we're seeing how it's acting in a very vaccinated country. Apparently it is, like colds, using the fact that some people have partial immunity and aren't getting as sick from an infection as others (we all have various antibodies to colds, including colds caused by coronaviruses, and then some people have a stronger natural immunity to colds in the first place so just incubate them but never get sick) to spread and live -- it's "goal" isn't to kill humans, but to keep on surviving. It clearly is using the vaccinated in this examination of Israels stats as reservoirs in whom it can survive, but it's not making them nearly as sick as they would be without the shot. And it doesn't really have to. In a way, it's an advantage for Delta in that country that most of the population it could infect is not likely to become incapacitated by the virus and some will keep going to work.

What that means for how Delta will hit the unvaccinated insofar as disease-causing capacity, I don't know. That's another thing the virus really doesn't care about if it can transmit well enough.

------

Vaccination is the best thing anyone can do (to protect themselves but also enhance the ability to protect others), and cloth masks were never 100% effective either at hopefully preventing your asymtomatic/presymptomatic cough from infecting another person (the main thing a non-N95 style mask did). Masks and social distancing were mitigation strategies, and could still be helpful.

But really, at this point, not getting vaccinated is willingly participating in a "death lottery" -- especially if the virus incubates well enough in vaccinated people to spread to the non-vaccinated without the vaccinated person realizing they're sick instead of dealing with allergies and should STFAH.

Since COVID surveillance will remain high if anyone goes to the doctor, we should distinguish "colds" from "COVID" fairly easily if they're bad enough to drive someone to seek medical treatment. Pharmacies continuing to offer both vaccines and COVID testing, like mine is, will also help those who feel puny enough to stay at home or use telemedicine for their doctor interaction -- script them the good decongestant/expectorant combo and they can get the test while getting their script (and pharmacists know what meds are generally prescribed for the "common cold", so will be keeping those pts at curbside).

It'd honestly want to commission a study on the mild but COVID-specific symptoms, such as loss of smell, and if that is something that is still clear in the vaccinated patients who are not hospitalized but known to be infected with COVID. That might be the best way for us vaccinated people to not be this virus's helpers -- to know how to tell when we should STFAH. Also, employers need to add STFAH benefits to their wage packages if they are wanting to attract more workers. It would help lower transmission rates as kids go back to school and parents go back to work.

[caraher]

14. Masks and distancing work with anything transmitted the same way

Where are you reading this? Masks and distancing have to work proportionately just as well for any variant because the transmission mode relies on the same physical processes. The only way variants can differ in transmission likelihood would be either on the viral load required to become infected or in the amount of virus typically shed by someone who is infectious. So to make up an example, suppose delta is twice as easy to spread because you only need to be exposed to half as many particles to catch it. If your masking and social distancing behaviors made you half as likely to catch the original virus, they should still make it half as likely that you catch delta compared to doing nothing at all.

It's still twice as likely that you'll catch it, but there is still a reduced risk thanks to masks and distancing.

As for an official source, how about a WHO press conference?

So, there are all kinds of different ways in which a virus can gain an advantage over the other viruses in infecting humans and in doing that it tends to replace all the other viruses because it is just fitter and more adapted, from an evolutionary perspective, to the human body.

Therefore, we have to look, when we talk about stopping the transmission of variants, and Maria has said this for a year and a half, it’s the same things we need to do. We need to ensure that people who are sick and infected don’t get the opportunity to infect others. We have to ensure that the environments we work it, be it the air or the surfaces in the environments we’re in are appropriate sanitised.

We have to reduce our own exposure, so we get exposed to less virus, which is the infectious dose, and we have to ensure we’re wearing masks and doing other things to prevent us inhaling particles that will cause us to be sick.

So, it doesn’t change what we do but what it does is, it should remind us that we need to do all of those things and we need to do it much more fastidiously. We need to do it with much more care. While the virus may change in how it does its business, we need to intensify what we’re doing now because the same things will work but we just need to be more cautious, more diligent and more dedicated to that task, and that’s really tough when all we want to do is go back to our normal lives.

[NickB79]

13. Per Fauci, the vaccinated rarely spread the virus, though

https://news.yahoo.com/news/dr-fauci-reveals-key-difference-113456048.html

So I fail to see how the breakthrough cases in vaccinated individuals will result in super spreaders.

[stillcool]

16. I don't think we can rely on statements made

prior to a new variant, or mutation.

[moriah]

19. If that was based on May data, and data from the US, then sadly....

... it may not apply to the Delta strain -- depending on just what it "learned" through its "experiments" while blowing through a large country in how to be more easily transmissible. Or it may. We just don't know.

We can hope it does prevent the vaccinated who don't realize their "allergies" are COVID from infecting others, but it is still possible depending on how this and future strains evolve/d.

Also, on the totally anecdotal side, I am one of those people who catches every "creeping crud" and other upper respiratory virus (with the exception of the flu, at least if I get vaccinated). I have seen how "asymptomatic" transmission works, in that a cold would be going around my guy's office, he'd feel a touch run down but nothing to stop him from going to work or even thinking of himself as "sick", and then I'd get the full-blown virus from being a close household contact despite him probably barely incubating much at all.

The fact I catch every respiratory bug (and in the last decade, often end up in the hospital as a result of minor bugs) is why I got the vaccine as soon as my category became eligible -- not because I expected it to be 100% at keeping me from getting sick or giving it to others, but to keep me from dying if I caught it. I had set my expectations fairly low from the outset, so I'm not shocked or disappointed really. (My expectations were also low because I am in the state that now has the number 1 rate of new infections per capita, at least per what I read on Twitter, and my observations of our habits/our vaccination rates do not contradict that potential factoid.)

[Baked Potato]

10. Never stopped masking here. It's just a minor inconvenience. Nt

[SunSeeker]

18. Similar results in the UK.

The cases are less severe among the vaccinated, but...In the UK, where the Delta variant makes up more than 90% of cases, 26 of 73 total deaths associated with the Delta variant were among people who had been fully vaccinated. https://www.businessinsider.com/israel-50-of-delta-variant-cases-vaccinated-severe-2021-6