Jerusalem: Increasing Coronavirus cases in Israel, where most of the population is inoculated with vaccine Pfizer / Biontech, offering “preliminary signals” that vaccines may not be less effective in preventing mild disease from the Delta variant, an expert said Monday.
But Ran Balicer, chairman of the Israeli national expert panel in Covid-19, emphasized it “too early to assess the effectiveness of vaccines against variants” first identified in India in April which surged throughout the world.
It was partly due to the whole number of cases among Israelis who were fully vaccinated and because those cases were not distributed evenly throughout the population, the more compliance with efforts to achieve conclusions about data.
Balicer, also Chief Innovation Officer in Clamal Health Services, Israeli Health Maintenance Organization (HMO), told AFP that the emergence of the Delta variant as a “dominant strain” in the country has caused “major changes in transmission dynamics”.
The launch of the Israeli vaccine which began in December was one of the fastest in the world, making the Jewish State of the case study tightly watched on whether bulk inoculation offered a way out of pandemic.
Vaccination has brought transmission to around five new local cases per day but that number has increased by around 300 in the past few days, with a delta variant raging.
About half of the everyday cases are among children, and half are adults who are mostly vaccinated.
“Until some extent that can be expected since 85 percent of Israeli adults are vaccinated,” Balicer said.
“But the tariff where we see this breakthrough case makes some believes that they surpass the expected point and suggest some decreases the effectiveness of vaccines against mild disease (but not severe illness) is likely.” The number of severe cases among vaccinated Israel has increased in the last few days of about one every two days to five cases per day, said Balicer.
He said it was too early to draw conclusions about the effectiveness of vaccines against serious diseases caused by Delta variants.
But, he added, experts “still hope that the effectiveness of vaccines against serious diseases will remain as high as the Alfa strain” identified for the first time in the UK in December.
Israeli Prime Minister Naphtali Bennett warned Sunday, ahead of the weekly cabinet meeting, that “with the Delta variant running Amok,” Israel may have to reintroduce certain limits revoked with tra transmission.
Balicer said it was impossible for Israel to contain increased cases without further restrictions to be rediscovered, but voicing their hopes of light and “the walls of the inoculated Israeli vaccine will help reduce further deployment.