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The health ministry is reportedly considering changing its policy on vaccinating people who have recovered from COVID-19 and may also give them vaccines, as part of the country’s mass inoculation program.
Until now, patients infected with the virus were not allowed to be vaccinated by the health system.
Dr Orly Greenfield, medical director of the national campaign against the virus at the Department of Health, confirmed on Sunday that the case was under review, telling Channel 12: “Apparently we will also vaccinate those who have failed. restored.
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Greenfield said there was an ongoing discussion within the ministry about when to start vaccinating recovered patients and how many vaccines they should receive.
Israel uses the two-dose Pfizer / BioNTech vaccination for its vaccination schedule, but Greenfield noted that there is debate in the scientific community, in Israel and abroad, as to whether recovered patients need both. injections.
Last week, an Israeli study found that there was a robust immune response from recovered COVID-19 patients who had been vaccinated, indicating that immunity lasts, even though antibody levels appear to be dropping.
Most vaccines work by first “showing” a copy of the coronavirus to a body’s immune system with the first dose, which allows it to learn how to fight it. The second dose introduces an antigen designed to elicit a broad response from anti-virus antibodies, which rush to protect the body and create fight-ready copy phalanges if the real SARS-COV-2 appears.
People who have already been infected with COVID-19 have these anti-virus antibodies once they recover, but tests have shown that the antibodies eventually wear off, raising fears of reinfection.
However, researchers at Ziv Medical Center in the city of Safed in the Galilee found that a small sample of recovered patients who were given the first dose of a coronavirus vaccine exhibited the large-scale immune response that most of people have only after receiving a second dose.
Recent figures from the Department of Health show that, as of February 8, the Department of Health recorded 861 cases of people who were re-infected with the coronavirus within three months of the virus being first infected, Channel 12 reported.
The station said the ministry had suggested there could be two reasons for the phenomenon. The first is that those who were asymptomatic when they first battled the virus, or who had only mild symptoms, may not have developed long-term immunity.
Another possibility is that the patients were infected with a mutation in the virus against which their previous illness did not produce a defense.
Since the virus outbreak began early last year, 723,726 people have been diagnosed with the coronavirus in Israel and 5,378 have died from COVID-19, according to health ministry figures released on Sunday.
Israel has so far administered the two doses of the vaccine to 2,505,491 people – more than a quarter of the population, according to the data. There are 3,871,898 people who have received at least the first dose of the vaccine.
New mutations in the virus, and in particular the so-called British strain, have been accused of keeping infection rates high during an ongoing nationwide lockdown, now in its sixth week, which has been enforced alongside to the vaccination campaign. The past few days have seen a slight downward trend in infections, which health officials see as an indication the measures are finally working.
Although some lockdown restrictions have been relaxed, the government has made an effective vaccination program a key part of ending the lockdown.
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