Israel Becomes Test Case for Fourth COVID Vaccine

A year after implementing the world’s fastest vaccination program against the coronavirus, Israel has begun administering fourth doses across the board amid a surge in cases of the omicron variant.

Although the number of severe cases and deaths remains well below last year’s peak, infections have soared to a record high and could once again threaten to overwhelm hospitals should the new number of daily infections hit 50,000, as the Israeli prime minister warned, Naftali Bennett. Many of the newly infected received at least two vaccinations.

The surge in cases is affecting Israel as its leaders adopt strategies that confuse the population, and as lines at test sites grow longer, officials have also begun to recognize that they may have to resort to what Bennett denounced so strongly when he was an opposition lawmaker: a new confinement.

Israel’s experience of the pandemic has become a case study around the world due to the aggressive steps it took to contain the virus early on, its failed reopening after first lockdown, and its early administration of vaccines and booster doses. .

Israel went ahead this week with a fourth dose for people 60 and older despite concerns about a lack of efficacy data, in an effort to protect the most vulnerable.

Galia Rahav, a member of the expert team advising the government, said Israel should not consider expanding eligibility until it has more data on waning immunity, and warned against other countries releasing a fourth vaccine too soon. Israel began administering third doses in August.

With less than 70% of its population fully vaccinated, Israel ceased to be among the most vaccinated countries in the world, ranking 67th in a Bloomberg ranking. That’s in part because it has a large population of young children, whose parents have often resisted vaccination.

On Tuesday, new infections approached 12,000 in the nation of 9.5 million, breaking an early September record set just weeks after Israel’s global reinforcement campaign began.

Plans to go ahead with a fourth vaccine ran into a series of hurdles last month due to a lack of robust data on omicron or the efficacy of another vaccine. However, after a clinical trial of a fourth inoculation began and the number of infections began to skyrocket, the government went ahead with its plan.

Preliminary data suggests that the fourth dose offers a much higher level of protection against infection and severe morbidity, and a five-fold increase in the amount of antibodies about a week after receiving the inoculation, Bennett said.