Israel’s ultra-vaccinated crisis is a serious warning to America

JERUSALEM – The massive wave of COVID-19 infections in Israel, one of the most vaccinated countries in the world, points to a complicated path for America.

In June, there were several days without a new COVID infection in Israel. The country launched its national immunization campaign in December last year and has one of the highest immunization rates in the world, with 80 percent of citizens over the age of 12 fully immunized. COVID, most Israelis believed, had been defeated. All restrictions were lifted and the Israelis returned to partying and praying in places without masks.

Fast forward two months later: Israel reported 9,831 new diagnosed cases on Tuesday, a hair’s breadth from the worst daily figure on record in the country – 10,000 – at the height of the third wave. More than 350 people died from the disease in the first three weeks of August. At a press conference on Sunday, the directors of seven public hospitals announced that they could no longer admit patients with coronavirus. With 670 COVID-19 patients requiring intensive care, their services are overflowing and staff are at the breaking point.

“I don’t want to scare you,” coronavirus tsar Dr Salman Zarka told Israel’s parliament this week. “But it’s the data. Unfortunately, the numbers don’t lie.

What happened?

The complex and sobering truth is that no policy or event has brought Israel into this crisis, Hagai Levine, professor of epidemiology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, told the Daily Beast. A set of deadly circumstances have come together to put Israel on the brink, most of which can be summed up as: “We are still in the midst of a pandemic, and there is no quick fix. “

“All the vectors influenced the increase in morbidity,” he said.

But the main causes of Israel’s current situation are the predominance of the extremely infectious Delta variant, which was brought into the country by Israelis returning from vacations abroad in the weeks in which Israel abandoned all of them. the restrictive measures, as well as the worrying decrease in the effectiveness of the vaccine after about six months.

Israel has vaccinated its population almost exclusively with the Pfizer / BioNTech vaccine, which received full FDA approval on Monday and remains the gold standard for preventing serious illness from the coronavirus.

But in early July, when citizens over 60 were almost fully vaccinated, Israeli scientists began to observe a worrying increase in infections – if not serious illnesses and deaths – among double vaccines.

Fully vaccinated people with weakened immune systems seemed particularly vulnerable to the aggressive Delta variant.

In mid-July, Sheba Hospital professor Galia Rahav began experimenting with booster injections for oncology patients, transplant patients and the hospital’s own staff. Group of 70 elderly Israelis vaccinated with transplanted kidneys were the first to receive a third dose.

The success of Rahav’s attempts to boost immunity at around month six contributed to the Centers for Disease Control’s decision, announced last week, to begin offering booster shots to Americans in September.

In order to reduce serious illness and the number of deaths from COVID, and avoid a fourth national lockdown, Israel has embarked on an aggressive effort to provide all adults with reminders within weeks.

Starting this week, all Israelis over the age of 30 will be eligible to receive booster shots. By the end of the month, they should be universally available to anyone over the age of 12 who received their second vaccine five months or more ago.

Israel will then reconfigure its Green Passports, granting them only to triples vaccinated, and limiting their validity to six months. In anticipation of this change, the number of unvaccinated Israelis receiving their first injections has tripled since early August.

The World Health Organization has called on rich countries to stop all third vaccines for a period of two months, hoping that a moratorium will allow poorer countries, where few citizens have received even a first vaccination, to catch up. The United States rejected the appeal and Israel ignored it.

Asked what brought Israel to a peak in transmission even as the country has already provided third doses of vaccines to 1.5 million citizens, Rahav, who has become one of the most well-known faces of health messages Israel’s public, sighed, saying, “I think we’re dealing with a very nasty virus. That’s the main problem, and we’re learning it the hard way.

“It is a combination of waning immunity, so those vaccinated are re-infected, and at the same time the highly transmissible Delta variant,” Rahav said, adding that the Israelis lacked the discipline to revert to using the mask. as the numbers started to rise. “But this is not an Israeli problem,” she added. ” He is everywhere. “

Its conclusion should give US officials pause for thought, as they face the reopening of schools because, at best, only 50% of eligible adults have been fully immunized.

Unlike New Zealand, which targets zero community transmission of the coronavirus and imposes lockdowns when a single positive case is identified, Israeli authorities have opted for a model they call “living with the crown”.

“Israel is truly a pioneer,” said Levine, former president of the National Association of Public Health Physicians, referring to the groundbreaking vaccination campaign and the country’s efforts, now underway, to fully reopen schools. September 1 while remaining in place. measures to prevent outbreaks caused by schools, like the one that shut down the country last summer.

“We have made a plan that is not airtight,” Zarka, the coronavirus czar, told a local radio station. “It is clear that there will be cases of illness in schools… [but] Locking yourself in and shutting down the school system is not exactly the solution.

He called on the government to place stricter limits on the size of cultural and sporting events until the incidence of the coronavirus decreases.

“Each country needs to assess its own epidemiology,” said Levine, “its culture, its public health, the public’s confidence in its health authorities.” Referring to New Zealand, he added that “we can all learn from other countries, but you cannot copy and paste methods from other countries”.

Israel has been forced to make quick decisions and in a time of great uncertainty. Levine was among public health officials who expressed doubts about the wisdom of Israel’s untested move for a nationwide booster vaccination, but he told the Daily Beast that the latest statistics , showing that only 0.2 of the 1.1 million first recipients of the third jab were infected with the coronavirus, proved it to be a “courageous decision”.

Last week showed a significant reduction in morbidity among triple-vaccinated Israelis over 70, the first group to receive the booster.

Like other experts, Rahav supports the reopening of schools, but noted that thanks to the upcoming Jewish holidays, which will close schools in about 80% of the country, Israel will once again be in a unique position to serve as a huge laboratory.