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JERUSALEM (AP) – Israel continues its aggressive campaign of offering coronavirus boosters to almost everyone over 12 and says its approach was further justified by a US decision to vaccinate older or older patients high risk.
Israeli officials attribute the recall, which has already been administered to around a third of the population, to helping suppress the country’s latest wave of COVID-19 infections. They say the different approaches are based on the same awareness that boostering is the right way to go, and expect the United States and other countries to expand their campaigns in the coming months.
“The decision bolstered our findings that the third dose is safe,” said Dr Nadav Davidovich, director of the school of public health at Israel’s Ben-Gurion University and president of the Association of Medical Doctors. public of the country. “The main question now is to prioritize. “
The World Health Organization calls for a moratorium on boosters at least until the end of the year so more people in poor countries can receive their first two doses, but Israeli officials say the booster is just as important in preventing infections.
“We know for sure that the current system of vaccine nationalism harms us all and creates variants,” said Davidovich, who is also a member of an Israeli government panel. But he added that the problem is “much larger than Israel”.
Israel rushed early this year to vaccinate most of its adult population after making deal with Pfizer exchange medical data in exchange for a regular supply of doses. He also purchased large quantities of Moderna and AstraZeneca vaccines.
Most adults had received two doses of the Pfizer vaccine in March, dropping infection levels and allowing the government to lift nearly all restrictions on coronaviruses.
But in June, the highly infectious delta variant began to spread. After investigating the matter, the experts concluded that the vaccine was still effective against the virus, but its effectiveness declined around five months after the second injection.
At the end of July, Israel began distributing booster shots to citizens at risk, including those over the age of 60. In a few weeks, he extended the campaign to the entire population.
More than 3 million of Israel’s 9 million citizens have received a third dose of the Pfizer vaccine, according to the health ministry.
In a study published last week in the New England Journal of Medicine, Israeli experts said that in people vaccinated five months earlier, the booster increased the effectiveness of the vaccine tenfold compared to vaccinated patients who had not received it. .
This study followed about 1 million people aged 60 and over and found that the booster was “very effective in reducing the rate of confirmed infection and serious illness,” the health ministry said.
A senior Israeli health official, Dr Sharon Alroy Preiss, was among the experts testifying before the U.S. Food and Drug Administration panel last week in favor of the recall. But the regulator decided not to use boosters for the general population, choosing to only allow them for people aged 65 or older and those in high-risk groups.
Experts cited a lack of data on the safety of additional doses and also questioned the value of mass boosters, rather than those intended for specific groups. The United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention made a similar approval Thusday.
The Israeli Ministry of Health said the FDA decision “gave validity to the third vaccination operation” underway in Israel, which “decided to act responsibly and swiftly in order to deal with the growing infections.” . He said statistics show that the booster dose “restored protection”.
The past few weeks have seen “a drop in the rate of new infections among the elderly”, the vast majority of whom have received booster shots, and “a continued increase in the proportion of unvaccinated people in new severe cases,” Dr Ran Balicer, head of the government expert advisory group on COVID-19, told The Associated Press.
In recent weeks, as the recall campaign has been rolled out, the percentage of unvaccinated among severe COVID-19 cases has increased and the total number of new cases among people who have received at least two injections has declined.
About 70% of the 703 severe COVID-19 cases in Israel as of Friday were among the unvaccinated, and about 20% had not received a booster. A month earlier, after Israel vaccinated 1.5 million people with a third dose, these two groups were also represented among the severe cases.
More than 60% of Israelis – the overwhelming majority of the adult population – have received at least two doses of the coronavirus vaccine.
Some experts noted that the United States and Europe were several months behind Israel’s vaccination campaign and predicted that those countries would follow suit in the months to come.
“We are first experiencing a phenomenon that will likely become apparent in many other countries in the coming months and create a similar challenge there,” Balicer said. “Few, if any, other countries are walking in our shoes at this time.”
UK is already launching recall campaign, with third doses available to anyone over 50 and other vulnerable groups.
WHO has called on rich countries to refrain from depleting vaccine stocks on booster shots when much of the world has yet to receive one. A third stroke may be necessary for people with certain health conditions, but “reminders for the general public are not appropriate at this point in the pandemic,” he said.
“The more vaccine inequity persists, the more the virus will circulate and change, the more social and economic disruption will continue, and the more likely it is that more variants will emerge that make vaccines less effective,” he said. Friday in a statement.
Balicer said Israel, as a small country, has little effect on global supplies and that its role as a global laboratory provides “a very important source of knowledge” for other countries.
Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett has urged the public to obtain booster shots as part of his aggressive public relations campaign since taking office in June.
“Israel is the only country in the world that offers its citizens this gift of the possibility – both legally and in terms of supply – of a booster,” he said last week.
Balicer said other states should prepare national plans for the deployment of the booster injections.
“Countries that have vaccinated more recently should be prepared for the impact of declining vaccine immunity manifesting in mid-winter, further intensifying the challenge,” he said.
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Follow Ilan Ben Zion on Twitter: https://twitter.com/IlanBenZion
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