Israel: Highly Vaccinated But Seeing A Dramatic Surge In New Covid Cases, NPR
- Israel is experiencing a 4th wave of infections and hospitalizations (BBC).
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- NPR, Aug. 20, 2021. - Ed.
Israel was the first country on Earth to fully vaccinate a majority of its citizens against COVID-19. Now it has one of the world's highest daily infection rates - average of nearly 7,500 confirmed cases a day, double what it was 2 weeks ago. Nearly one in every 150 people in Israel today has the virus. What happened, and what can be learned about the vaccine's impact on a highly vaccinated country?
Here are 6 lessons learned- and one looming question for the future of the pandemic.
1. Immunity from the vaccine dips over time. Israel had fully vaccinated slightly over half its population by March 25. Infections waned, venues reopened to the vaccinated and the prime minister told Israelis to go out and have fun. By June, all restrictions, including indoor masking, were abolished. But Israel paid a price for the early rollout. Health officials, and then Pfizer, said their data showed a dip in the vaccine's protection around 6 months after receiving the second shot.
2. The delta variant broke through the vaccine's waning protection. It was a perfect storm: The vaccine's waning protection came around the same time the more infectious delta variant arrived in Israel this summer. Delta accounts for nearly all infections in Israel today. "The most influential event was so many people who went abroad in the summer- vacations- and brought the delta variant very, very quickly to Israel," said Siegal Sadetzki, a former public health director in Israel's Health Ministry.
3. If you get infected, being vaccinated helps. The good news is that among Israel's serious infections on Thursday of this week, according to Health Ministry data, the rate of serious cases among unvaccinated people over age 60 (178.7 per 100,000) was 9 times more than the rate among fully vaccinated people of the same age category, & the rate of serious cases among unvaccinated people in the under-60 crowd (3.2 per 100,000) was a little more than double the rate among vaccinated people in that age bracket. The bad new is that half of Israel's seriously ill patients who are currently hospitalized were fully vaccinated at least 5 months ago. Most are over 60 years old & have comorbidities. Seriously ill patients who are unvaccinated are mostly young, healthy people whose condition deteriorated quickly..
Israel has lowered the minimum age for boosters to 40. "The triple dose is the solution to curbing the current infection outbreak," said Anat Ekka Zohar...
- Read More,
https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2021/08/20/1029628471/highly-vaccinated-israel-is-seeing-a-dramatic-surge-in-new-covid-cases-heres-why
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- Israel Extends Covid Restrictions To 3-Yr-Olds As Cases Surge, BBC, Aug. 19, '21, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-58245285
Israel is now requiring anyone over the age of three to show proof of vaccination or a negative Covid-19 test before entering many indoor spaces, as it tackles a sharp rise in infections. Restaurants, cafes, museums, libraries, gyms and pools are among the venues covered by the "Green Pass" system. However, proof of immunity is not needed to go into shops or malls.
The country's Covid-19 tsar said it was "at war" with the virus despite its world-leading vaccination programme. "Our morbidity is rising day by day," Salman Zarka told a parliamentary committee on Wednesday, according to the Jerusalem Post...
OAITW r.2.0
(23,814 posts)The Trumpsters claim special love for Israel, but they don't seem to talk much about the country's internal domestic social policies. Lotsa of socialism in Israel....
SarcasticSatyr
(1,177 posts)Israel has among the most liberal pro-choice laws on the planet. It's very easy to get an abortion in Israel, and insurance will cover it.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/israels-abortion-law-now-among-worlds-most-liberal/
Hugh_Lebowski
(33,643 posts)Someone explain to me how these two things could logically be simultaneously true?
and
This is saying, in effect:
Seriously Ill (over 60):
10/100 Vaccinated
90/100 Unvaccinated
Really Seriously Ill i.e. in hospital (mostly over 60):
50/100 Vaccinated (at LEAST)
50/100 Unvaccinated (at MOST)
These number, if correct, seem to suggest it's VASTLY more likely that a person who gets seriously ill subsequently winds up in hospital ... if they're vaccinated, vs. if they are not.
subterranean
(3,427 posts)60% of all adults in Israel are vaccinated, and for people over 60, that number is more than 90%.
So even though the unvaccinated are only a small minority of older adults, they account for about half of the hospitalized cases.
This suggests that if the numbers of vaccinated and unvaccinated people were equal, the unvaccinated would account for a much larger percentage of the hospitalized cases. It would probably be more like 80-90% unvaccinated vs. 10-20% vaccinated.
Hugh_Lebowski
(33,643 posts)Knowing exactly the % being described by 'most' (is that 51%, or 99%?) is an important part of the equation, and it's not offered here.
In fact overall there's too many numbers 'missing' to really know what to make of the synopsis of stats on offer here.
madville
(7,397 posts)Say 90% of those over 60 are vaccinated and 10% arent. Say you have 900 vaxxed folks and 100 unvaxxed. You could have 10 vaxxed folks hospitalized and 10 unvaxxed, a 50/50 spilt of those hospitalized but the chances of being hospitalized are 9 times greater for the unvaxxed group.
Still way better to be vaxxed but I agree that its effectiveness seems to wane fast once past the 6 month mark.
Hugh_Lebowski
(33,643 posts)Then the statement that 'half of the people in the hospital are vaccinated' is inherently a distortion (even if technically true) of the situation, given that the vaccinated are 90% of the population (over 60).
The 9-1 rate is the far more important number is my conclusion, and I'm not sure enough info is actually provided here to conclude that the vaccine effectiveness is waning. May be true, but we need to know what % of the '10 vaxxed folks hospitalized' are vaccinated > 6 months ago versus less than 6 months, and those %'s in the total population as well