The Pfizer vaccine is less effective against the Delta variant than health officials had hoped, Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said on Friday after it was revealed that more than 1,000 Israelis have tested positive for coronavirus.
“We don’t know exactly how much the vaccine helps, but it’s significantly less,” Bennett said.
The prime minister held a meeting of health officials and ministers to discuss how to control the virus in light of the rising numbers of infections in Israel.
Bennett pointed out that the number of children admitted to hospital on a daily basis has increased in Britain in recent days. With more than 5.7 million Israelis who have had at least one shot of the Pfizer vaccine, the country continues to urge citizens — especially teenagers — to get vaccinated.
The highest number of corona cases in almost four months, 1,118 people, was recorded on Friday, according to the Israeli Ministry of Health. Of those screened, 1.58% tested positive. The reproduction rate (R), stands at 1.37 – meaning coronavirus in Israel is spreading again.
While the number of daily infections is increasing, serious morbidity has also increased to a lesser extent with about 58 patients hospitalized in serious condition – an increase of six people over the weekend. In April, with about 6,500 active cases as of today, there were 370 patients admitted in serious condition.
The likely explanation is that the current virus carriers include about 2,000 schoolchildren, half of whom are fully vaccinated. Children are very unlikely to develop severe forms of the disease, although it does occur occasionally.
At present, approximately 60% of patients with severe conditions are vaccinated. About 90% of newly infected people over the age of 50 are fully vaccinated.
According to Prof. Eran Segal, a computer biologist at the Weizmann Institute of Science, the “rate of cases becoming seriously ill is now 1.6%, compared to 4% at a similar stage in the third wave when there were no vaccines,”
