Israel’s grim COVID data suggests vaccines alone won’t stop pandemic

Data on COVID cases in Israel suggests vaccination alone is not enough to completely stop pandemic, experts say News week.

Scientists around the world have been watching Israel closely to see how vaccinations could affect the pandemic, since the country launched a rapid vaccination campaign in December 2020. This has seen more than half of its population fully vaccinated as of March. This year.

Yet Israel currently has one of the worst bi-weekly COVID case rates per million population in the world as the country battles the delta variant, according to figures collected by OurWorldInData as of August 24.

Cases of rupture are also a matter of concern. Earlier this month, Science The magazine reported that 514 Israelis were hospitalized with COVID as of August 15, that 59% of them had been fully vaccinated and that the vast majority of those fully vaccinated were aged 60 or older.

News week could not get confirmation from the Israeli Ministry of Health regarding current data on how vaccinated people behaved in terms of death or the severity of their condition compared to unvaccinated people, but the severity of cases in hospital patients brings the supposed softness of revolutionary cases to the fore.

Uri Shalit, bioinformatician at the Israel Institute of Technology, said Science that “most hospital patients are effectively vaccinated”.

The numbers come as revolutionary cases, especially with regard to the delta variant, are a matter of concern.

Israel’s director of public health, Dr Sharon Alroy-Preis, said earlier this month that there was evidence of decreased immunity to COVID in people who have been vaccinated early in Israel.

COVID vaccines were never promised to be 100% effective, but they were found to be very effective in initial studies. Israel’s data therefore raises concerns about the increased threat of delta compared to previous variants, as well as diminished immunity.

Decreasing immunity?

Commenting on the situation in Israel, Rowland Kao, professor of veterinary epidemiology and data science at the University of Edinburgh, UK, said News week: “The main conclusion here is that there is evidence for a decrease in immunity in the vaccinated population.

“Israel with its very early vaccination campaign has been considered a leading indicator of what is happening in other countries, and the evidence that they exhibit that immune protection against the delta variant decreases over time is one indicator. important to what can happen in other countries. “

He said the critical question is whether COVID, along with other respiratory infections such as the flu, will lead to hospitalization rates exceeding hospital capacity this winter.

In this there is uncertainty, and data from countries with high vaccination rates like Israel and the UK will likely begin to provide an answer.

Vaccines are not a quick fix …

In light of data from Israel, several experts have pointed out that vaccination is not a silver bullet to end the pandemic and that breakthrough cases – potentially even more with delta – were always going to be a factor.

“I think the public expected the vaccines to work overnight and bring the pandemic to a complete end,” said William P. Hanage, associate professor of epidemiology at Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health . News week.

“Ultimately, while vaccines are key to controlling the pandemic and transitioning to a more stable ‘normal’ post-pandemic state, they won’t immediately do so both due to the unvaccinated population. non-immune residual and potential for variants. “

Alexander Edwards, associate professor of biomedical technology at the University of Reading, UK, echoed this point.

Vaccines are not 100 percent effective, and Edwards said News week that they “are not a quick fix” and “cannot eliminate the public health problems caused by infections”.

“Instead,” he said, “they remain a vital tool – indeed a solid gold tool – but other tools are still essential.”

This is where non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) come in – methods of controlling the virus without using drugs such as vaccines or antibody treatments – according to Dr. Edward Hutchinson, senior lecturer at the Center for Viruses. Research from the University of Glasgow, United Kingdom

People all over the world are well acquainted with NIPs by now. Regular hand washing, social distancing, and wearing a mask are all ways of controlling the virus alongside the arsenal of COVID vaccines.

“I cannot stress enough that the variants emphasize the importance of NIPs, which have always been important,” he said. “If the vaccination doesn’t slow the spread of the virus enough, even if it keeps you from getting very sick, try reducing the amount of virus it needs to protect you from. “

… but they don’t fail either

While Israel’s data may seem alarming, there are factors to consider.

Last week, Reuters reported that Israeli doctors found that severe cases of the COVID breakthrough were mostly in older, sicker patients.

Israel has also launched its COVID vaccine booster campaign, which is said to have dramatically improved levels of protection.

For Hutchinson, it’s important to look back to really put the current effectiveness of vaccines into perspective.

“In mid-2020, we would have been delighted with a vaccine that offered even partial protection against serious illness, and we ended up with several safe vaccines that offered almost complete protection against serious illness,” he said. -he declares.

“Given how difficult it has been to make good vaccines against new viruses, it is hard to overstate how remarkable the SARS-CoV-2 vaccines are.

“They can’t completely stop the spread of the virus – that genius is out of the bottle. But they can be used to turn SARS-CoV-2 into a virus that doesn’t disrupt our normal lives.”