COVID: Why are infections rising in Israel?

[MisterNiceKitty]

With almost 60% of the country fully vaccinated, Israel has seen a life after COVID-19. But now infections are on the rise. What's going on? Will a third jab help?

https://www.dw.com/en/covid-why-are-infections-rising-in-israel/a-58887131

Back in March, Israel thought it had seen the back of COVID-19. More than half of the country's 9.3 million population had received two jabs of a SARS-CoV-2 (coronavirus) vaccine. The number is now close to 60% of the country and rising.

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Stripped-back numbers

The number of confirmed COVID-19 cases per day (on a rolling 7-day average), started to rise around July 16, when daily infections were just 19.29. By August 16, the average was 5,950.43 infections a day.

Between May, June and July, the country was averaging zero deaths per day. That doesn't mean there were no deaths at all, but they didn't occur often enough for an average to be established.

By August 15, Israel was averaging two new confirmed COVID deaths per day. It has jumped up to nearly five in just one day.

Although it is tempting to compare these figures to those of other countries, and there are higher and lower rates of infection and death, let's stay focused on Israel.

Why are infections rising in Israel?

It probably has something to do with the delta variant of the virus.

There's been some reluctance to declare delta as the dominant variant in Israel. Some say it is and some say it isn't.

But in a briefing on August 14, Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett did say that "the outbreak of the delta strain around the world and in Israel" was "engulfing the world."

That suggests the delta variant is behind many of the infections in Israel.

In addition, the Ministry of Health of Israel has reported "a marked decline in the effectiveness of the vaccine in preventing infection (64%) and symptomatic illness (64%) [since June 6]. This decline has been observed simultaneously with the spread of the delta variant in Israel."

A Reuters report at the time suggested that the end of social distancing restrictions in Israel had also played its part.

Israel has approved two COVID-19 vaccines: The Pfizer/BioNTech and the Moderna. Both are novel mRNA vaccines. Both reported an initial effectiveness of about 95%.

Some experts raise ethical and scientific issues around the third jab theory — for a start, there are countries who can't even get their hands on enough stock for one round of vaccinations. And second, they say the science doesn't back it up — that from what we know so far, a person is not necessarily better protected with a third shot.

But this could change over time. In a year or two, scientists may find that people need a fourth jab. Or perhaps the emergence of new variants will mean people will never be fully vaccinated and the world will just have to live with it.

In any case, as it stands, data suggests that even if there are breakthrough cases among fully vaccinated Israelis, their infections are less severe than among those who have had no jabs at all.

Taking a sample from August 16, 2021:

154.7 severely ill patients in Israel were unvaccinated.

48.4 severely ill patients were partially vaccinated

And 19.8 severely ill patients were fully vaccinated

[JohnSJ]

1. and your last observation should be the take away, and why we need boosters

[abqtommy]

2. The Delta variant is wreaking its toll around the world.

[mucifer]

3. 60% fully vaxxed isn't good enough to stop the delta

[Salviati]

4. "Partially vaccinated" means unvaccinated.

So we've got 203 unvaccinated vs. 20 vaccinated.

91% of the severely ill people are unvaccinated, so that shows that the vaccine is still very, very effective. We'd be better off trying to reduce the number of unvaccinated people, that will a) reduce the amount of exposure everyone is getting to the virus and b) reduce the shots on goal the virus has to evolving an even worse variant that does result in a significant decrease in vaccine effectiveness.

And actually the effectiveness is even higher than that, because the 203 patients came from the unvaccinated 40% of the population, whereas the 20 vaccinated patients came from the larger 60%.

Certainly, we should keep an eye on how the effectiveness of the vaccine changes over time, but it still seems like it's very effective at keeping people out of the ICU at the moment.