In Israel, they are already applying a third dose of the COVID-19 vaccine to immunocompromised people

In Israel, 66.2% of the population has already accessed at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine, according to the site OurDataWorld. The vaccination plan started last December and was one of the fastest in the world. Yesterday, Israel’s Ministry of Health has started offering third dose of COVID-19 vaccine to severely immunocompromised adults. This would be part of a preliminary initiative to offer booster doses of the vaccine later to the elderly and the most vulnerable.

According to the statement released last Sunday by the Israeli Ministry of Health, the recommendation for the booster dose is to increase antibody levels in immunocompromised people. It included cancer patients, liver transplant recipients and others who have recently shown weakened vaccine protection. He clarified that a decision on the administration of third doses for the general adult population has not yet been made.

Over the past week, a global debate over booster doses has emerged. The World Health Organization (WHO) and groups defending the human right to health say care must continue to focus on delivering the first doses to the world’s most vulnerable people.

So far, only 25.4% of the world’s population has had access to a single dose of the COVID-19 vaccine. In low-income countries, only 1% of the population received a dose. “The global vaccine supply gap is extremely uneven and inequitable,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said.

But in developed countries the appearance of new variants of the coronavirus, in particular Delta, which has gained dominance since last April, and the lack of knowledge of the duration of protection of the vaccine led some scientists to further investigate the possibility of applying the booster dose.

In the case of Israel, the second wave of COVID-19 was recorded from December of last year. With the impact of vaccination and containment measures and the use of chin straps, among others, daily cases and deaths have been reduced to zero daily cases by early June. In recent months, various mobility restrictions had been lifted to reduce the circulation of the coronavirus. However, In the first days of July, cases rose again to over 700 a day for the first time since March.

The Delta variant of the coronavirus, which was detected in India last year and is more transmissible, is believed to be one of the reasons why a rebound in COVID-19 cases is taking place in Israel. This change in the epidemiological situation has prompted the government of Prime Minister Naftali Bennett to adopt a new strategy in response to the pandemic. Last Friday, Israel reimposed the mandatory use of masks or chin straps indoors.

According to Israel News Channel 12, the strategy has been labeled “soft suppression”: it will seek to reduce the number of COVID-19 cases through vaccination of the elderly and immunocompromised populations with a third dose. The messenger RNA vaccine developed by BioNTech and Pfizer will be applied.

About half of the 45 patients currently hospitalized in Israel in serious condition are vaccinated, and the majority belong to risk groups, according to health officials. The death toll from COVID-19 has already reached 6,439. Eight deaths were confirmed last week, after almost two weeks without death. More than 55,000 tests were performed on Monday and the positivity rate was 1.33%.

The debate on the need for a booster dose is ongoing in various countries. On Monday, representatives of the Pfizer Company met with senior federal health officials in the United States to advocate for the application of a third dose in some people, especially those over 60 and the immunocompromised, between six and twelve months after receiving the two-dose regimen.

This meeting came after The US Department of Health and Human Services publicly reprimanded the two companies after announcing that they planned to seek emergency use authorization for the booster dose. The health authority said fully vaccinated Americans did not need a booster at this time.

The companies Pfizer and BioNTech suggest that booster doses will be needed this year, but government officials say science will dictate when. Some US health officials are concerned that if the US government takes too long to make a decision on the booster dose, the Delta variant could cause another wave of the virus in September in the unvaccinated and infect the vulnerable unvaccinated who are vaccinated.

In Argentina, the issue of the booster dose in the COVID-19 vaccination plan is being assessed, as recognized at the end of June by the Minister of Health of the Nation, Carla Vizzotti. On Sunday July 11, the Department of Health announced that it had signed an agreement with the company Modern in the United States, which has developed another of the messenger RNA vaccines “for the supply of 20 million doses or equivalent doses of the vaccine for its back-up administration ”.

In a statement, the Argentinian health authority estimated: “The mRNA vaccine proposed for use as a booster has a universal and multivalent character, since the modern COVID-19 vaccine platform allows it to be modified from the variants that are in circulation. With this agreement, Argentina becomes the fourth country in the world, behind Switzerland, Australia and the United States, as well as the European Union, ensuring the possibility of also having reinforcements ”.

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