According to Israel’s coronavirus tsar Nachman Ash, the first dose of Pfizer vaccine provided less protection against COVID-19 than the US pharmaceutical company initially indicated, warning that it could not protect against new strains of the virus.
Ash questioned the effectiveness of the vaccine after just one dose during talks with Health Ministry officials ahead of the cabinet meeting on Tuesday on the possibility of extending the nationwide exclusion, Army Radio reported Tuesday afternoon.
Many people became infected between the first and second Pfizer shots, Ash said. It appears that the protection of the first dose is ‘less effective than we thought’. The information on the protective effect against the virus of the first dose is ‘lower than what Pfizer offered’, he said.
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More than 2 million Israelis had their first Pfizer shot. More than 400,000 had the second time.
An education worker receives a COVID-19 vaccine injection at a Clalit clinic in Jerusalem on January 12, 2021. (Yonatan Sindel / Flash90)
According to the Ministry of Health, more than 12,400 people tested positive for coronavirus after receiving vaccinations; this figure contains 69 people who received the second dose.
According to Pfizer, the vaccine, manufactured with BioNTech, is approximately 52% effective after the first dose and increases to approximately 95% a number of days after the second dose.
Last week, Sharon Alroy-Preis, head of the department of public health, announced that the vaccine would fight infections by about 50 percent, 14 days after the first of the two shots were administered. She said the data were preliminary, and based on the results of coronavirus tests among those who received the vaccine, and those who did not, and who serve as a de facto control group.
At the same time, however, other, somewhat contradictory data were released by Israeli health care organizations: According to figures released by Clalit, Israel’s largest health provider, the chance of a person being infected with the coronavirus dropped by 33% in 14 days. after they have been vaccinated; separate figures recorded by the Maccabi health provider showed that the vaccine caused a 60% decrease in the chance of infection after the first shot was taken.
According to the report, Ash said during his talks with health officials on Tuesday that it is not certain that the vaccine can protect against mutated variants of the coronavirus.
A month after Israel’s vaccination campaign, Ministry of Health officials had hoped to see a decrease in daily infections and serious cases, but at present there is no such trend. The more contagious virus variants – especially the British tribe – are blamed for the problems in reducing diseases and alleviating the heavy burden on hospitals, despite the lock-in and mass vaccinations.
On January 7, 2020, Ziv hospital team members transported a new patient to the coronavirus ward of the hospital in the northern city of Safed. (David Cohen / Flash90)
According to Ash at Tuesday’s meeting of the so-called coronavirus cabinet, Ash said that health officials estimate that the British coronavirus variant is behind 30% -40% of current infections and that it will become the dominant strain in Israel within a few weeks. , according to Hebrew media reports. . The mutated strain of the virus is more contagious, although it is not considered more deadly.
Ash apparently recommended that the nationwide exclusion be extended by two weeks until February 4, saying that the basic reproduction number, an important indication of the transmission of the virus, would drop, but it would take a few more days before the full effect of exclusion.
The Ministry of Health said on Tuesday morning that a record 10,021 infections had been confirmed the previous day, bringing the country’s total tax rate to 562,167 since the start of the pandemic, including 81,059 active cases. The rate of positive tests reached the 10 percent mark for the first time in more than three months, with 10.2% of the nearly 100,000 tests being positive.