Israel’s COVID-19 vaccines are reducing the pandemic

After more than six weeks in Israel COVID-19 the spread of the vaccine he left the rest of the world behind, public health experts are taking a breather as the effects seem to be finally pouring in.

Earlier this week, when the country reported a clear and sustained decline in people aged 60 and over with serious illness, experts were confident they were seeing the effects of the vaccine. People over the age of 60 were given priority in the early stages of the spread of Israeli vaccines, so COVID-19 was expected to show a signal in national statistics.

“We are careful to say that the magic has begun,” he tweeted Eran Segal, a data scientist at the Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel, warned on February 1 that COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations and serious illnesses were falling among those over 60 years of age.

What’s more, one of Israel’s largest HMOs, a follow-up study by Maccabi Healthcare Services, suggests that Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine, which has been used in most shots so far, works almost as well in the real world. performed in clinical trials with 90% efficacy after two doses. That was no guarantee: medications and vaccines may behave differently outside the control limits of clinical trials.

The good news is that the US and Israel are hoping to represent the success of COVID-19 vaccines in their populations. But the data from Israel also reveals the challenges ahead.

Israeli experts interviewed by BuzzFeed News hoped that these positive results would emerge more quickly. The delay is largely attributed to the fight against the highly polluting Middle Eastern nation B.1.1.7 variant of coronavirus It was first seen in the UK – it is now believed to account for more than 70% of Israeli cases. And while both Pfizer and Modern reported that their vaccines effectively block variant B.1.1.7, apparently other variants previously identified in South Africa and Brazil less sensitive with current vaccines, therefore, they would be further affected if they became new or dominant variants with similar mutations.

Meanwhile, Israel has been criticized by human rights organizations for not extending the vaccination program to the occupied Palestinian territories. And there has been a slower spread among Israeli Palestinian Arab citizens and ultra-Orthodox Jewish communities, which is worrying because COVID-19 is the hardest hit group.

They are health experts who are watching the spread of Israel from the U.S., despite the Israeli government’s strong communication efforts, involving religious and other community leaders to try to correct vaccination concerns among Arab and ultra-Orthodox communities.

In the US, they have been black Americans die immoderately and sick COVID-19, and there are already falling behind In the U.S. vaccination campaign. And while black Americans have good reason to distrust the medical establishment heritage of racism within the health care system, there is no such thing as communications in the U.S. to convince skeptical groups about the benefits of getting vaccinated, Peter Hotez, chief vaccine researcher at Baylor Medical University in Houston, told BuzzFeed News.

The cold is feared if the spread of vaccines among black communities remains low and more dangerous variants of coronavirus are taken. “We’re losing a generation of moms, dads and siblings,” he said.

Israel owes the rapid spread of vaccines to the health system that requires all citizens to be members of one of the four HMOs, with clinics operating almost everywhere in a small, densely populated country. With Pfizer and Moderna’s vaccine supplies secured, the nation was able to use this robust health infrastructure to move faster than any other with the vaccine: as of Wednesday, Israel has provided approximately 59 shots per 100 people in the country, while the U.S. provided nearly 10.

The rules for getting vaccinated in Israel have also been much simpler than in the U.S., where decisions have been left to states based on factors such as age, occupational exposure to the virus and existing health conditions. Instead, Israel gave priority to the elderly, encouraged them all to shoot, and opened call centers to ease appointments. And despite its existing infrastructure, it opened up massive outdoor immunization centers.

“They made it very easy to register,” said Ann Blake, a colleague at Bayrez Hotez, who trained in Israeli medicine and public health. “If the vaccine is left at the end of the day, you have a clinic secretary blowing up text messages.”

The U.S., a much more fragmented health system and many people without health insurance, face major challenges in getting Israel vaccinated. Blake argued that the nation should learn from what Israel has worked on, opening up more giant vaccination centers and simplifying the rules for vaccine selection.

“We need to open stadiums in the country,” he said. “We’ve started doing that. We have to do that en masse. ”

But Israel has not been so effective in controlling the spread of the virus. The start of the vaccination campaign on December 19 was intensified in the early stages in cases caused by the currently prevalent B.1.1.7 variant. The nationwide blockade was carried out on December 27, making it difficult for scientists to reduce and differentiate the transmission caused by blocking the protective effects of the vaccine.

“Because all of these rough winds are blowing in different directions, it’s hard to detect the impact of the vaccine,” Uri Shalit, a data scientist at Haifa Technion, which specializes in health studies, told BuzzFeed News.

As of last week, Shalit and other experts remained nervous about the differences in trends in this blockade compared to what ended in October. But by this week, it was clear that Israel was seeing a decline in the number of elderly people with severe COVID-19, although serious cases were on the rise among young people.

As the tables above and below show, the decline in serious cases began in mid-January, shortly after the numbers of older Israelis receiving second vaccines rose. Right now, more than 75% of those over 60 have fired two shots, although the rise has slowed in recent days, to the alarm of some scientists. “You’ve exhausted the initial adopters,” Yaniv Erlich, a computer scientist at the Herzliya Interdisciplinary Center, told BuzzFeed News, following data on COVID-19.

Still, studies by Israeli HMOs add to the promising picture. In early research work published online on January 29, which has not yet been reviewed, researchers at Maccabi Healthcare Services have continued with more than 350,000 Israelis for 13 to 24 days after taking the first dose of the Pfizer vaccine, estimating it to be 51% effective. in preventing infection.

In data not yet published The Israeli magazine reported it last week Maccabi researchers found that the vaccine was 92% after two doses, based on a comparison of 163,000 fully vaccinated patients with a non-vaccinated Maccabi group. If these results are standing, it means that the Pfizer vaccine is almost as good in the real world as done in clinical trials.

Erlich and others warned that these results may overestimate the effects of the vaccine. One problem is that Israeli couples are usually vaccinated, providing additional protection that does not occur with volunteers in a clinical trial.

But Cyrille Cohen, an immunologist and vice dean of life sciences at Bar-Ilan University in Ramat Gan, appeared pleased with the reports. “It’s on par with what was planned,” he told BuzzFeed News. “I’m always cautious, but so far it’s very good news.”

Not so gratifying are the lower vaccination rates in ultra-Orthodox Jewish communities and in cities with a large Israeli Arab population. Many ultra-Orthodox Jews are skeptical of vaccines and are opposed to restrictions on limiting the spread of coronavirus. attended by thousands of people on January 31 at the funeral of a famous rabbi in Jerusalem, in defiance of the country’s current closure.

And at the end of January, Less than 70% of those over 60 in NazarethSometimes called the “Arab capital” of Israel, they were given a dose of the initial vaccine, well below the national average. In Nazareth and other cities with a large Arab population, the low use of vaccines is believed to be linked to a wider distrust of the Israeli government.

Another controversial issue is the vaccination of Palestinians in the occupied territories. Israel has maintained that health is the responsibility of the Palestinian National Authority under the Oslo Accords He allegedly intended to buy 100,000 doses The Sputnik V vaccine, developed by the Gamaleya Research Institute in Russia.

Others are pressured by groups Human Rights Watch, The Fourth Geneva Convention states that Israel requires a supply of medicine, Israel has begun send a small number of vaccines Palestinians. The movement is also under control because the regular movement of unvaccinated people (tens of thousands of Palestinians working in Israel) will damage the nation’s vaccine force.

The gap in the spread of vaccines in Israel means that the world leader in the COVID-19 vaccine will also have elements of its population, where coronavirus still has free circulation. Includes children: Pfizer vaccine is currently only allowed for those over 16 years of age. “We will not vaccinate children under the age of 16 until we get the results of the clinical trials that Pfizer is conducting,” Cohen told a committee advising the Israeli Ministry of Health on COVID-19 vaccine clinical trials.

While the virus is circulating, it is possible to create new variants, some of which may prevent current vaccines. Both Pfizer and Moderna are test options to respond to variants, including additional booster shooting or completely new vaccine formulations. But this means that some measures of social exclusion will continue to be necessary, especially if the variants that arise lead to future increases in coronavirus.

This worries Hagai Rossman, a researcher in the Segal group at the Weizmann Institute, who fears that more drastic restrictions will be met. “The public will not accept another harsh blockade after the vaccination campaign,” Rossman said.