Israel offers Pfizer Covid booster injections to people over 60 | Israel

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The Israeli Prime Minister has announced that the country will provide a coronavirus booster shot to those people over the age of 60 who have already been vaccinated.

Naftali Bennett’s announcement makes Israel, which launched one of the world’s most successful vaccination campaigns earlier this year, the first country to offer a third dose of the Western vaccine to its citizens on a large scale.

“This evening I am announcing the start of the campaign to receive the booster vaccine, the third vaccine,” Bennett said in a nationally televised address. “Reality proves that vaccines are safe. The reality also proves that vaccines protect against illness and death. Like the flu vaccine that needs to be renewed from time to time, it is the same in this case.”

The decision comes at a time of increasing infections and signs that the effectiveness of the vaccine is waning over time.

Anyone over 60 who was vaccinated more than five months ago will be eligible. Bennett said the country’s new president, Isaac Herzog, would be the first to receive a booster dose on Friday. It will also be presented to the general public.

Bennett, 49, said his first call after the press conference would be to his mother to encourage her to get a booster shot.

Neither the United States nor the European Union has approved coronavirus booster doses. It has not been proven whether a third dose helps, and if so, who needs one and when.

But Bennett said a team of expert advisors overwhelmingly agreed, by a margin of 56-1, that it made sense to launch a boosting campaign. He said the recommendation was made after “a great deal of research and analysis” and that information would be shared around the world. Initial studies in Israel indicated a low level of vaccine protection against serious diseases among those vaccinated in January.

“The results show that there is a decrease in the body’s immunity over time, and the purpose of the booster is to re-strengthen it, thus significantly reducing the chances of infection and serious illness,” Bennett said.

Israel used the Pfizer/BioNtech vaccine on its population. Previously, boosters were used in some countries with Chinese and Russian vaccines.

Early this year, Israel carried out one of the world’s most aggressive and successful vaccination campaigns, striking an agreement with Pfizer to purchase enough vaccines for its residents in exchange for sharing its data with the drug manufacturer.

More than 57% of the country’s 9.3 million citizens have received two doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine, and more than 80% of the population over the age of 40 has been vaccinated.

The vaccination program allowed Israel to reopen its economy before other countries. But Israel has seen a rise in cases of the new delta variant, even among vaccinated people. Bennett urged unvaccinated Israelis, especially reluctant youth, to get vaccinated immediately.

Earlier this month, Israel began giving individuals with weakened immune systems a third dose to increase their resilience against Covid-19.

Pfizer said, Wednesday, that the effectiveness of the vaccine drops slightly six months after the second dose. Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech said they plan to obtain permission for the boosters in August.

Most studies – and real-world data from Britain and the US – so far show that Pfizer’s vaccine is still powerfully protective against serious diseases. Only on Wednesday, Pfizer released data from its long-term study of 44,000 people that showed that while protection from any symptomatic infection decreased slightly six months after vaccination, protection against severe Covid-19 remained at about 97%. Earlier this month, the Israeli Ministry of Health announced that protection against severe disease was around 93%.

The World Health Organization said earlier this month that there was not enough evidence to prove the need for a third dose.

Agency officials have pleaded with wealthier nations to share vaccines with poorer nations that have not yet vaccinated their people, instead of using them as boosters. Israel itself has been criticized for not sharing more of its vaccines with the Palestinians.

The Israeli Ministry of Health recorded at least 2,165 new cases of coronavirus on Thursday, after an accelerating rise in infections over the past month. Serious cases of Covid-19 have grown from 19 per day in mid-June to 159 with the spread of the highly contagious delta variant.

Thanks to a successful vaccination campaign, Israel lifted almost all restrictions imposed on the coronavirus this spring. But with new cases rising again, the country has tried to stem the spread of the highly contagious delta variant by reimposing restrictions on gatherings, restoring a “green corridor” system for vaccinated people to enter certain enclosed spaces, and mask authorization.

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