We won’t need another vaccine until 2022, expert says

Israelis won’t need to get another coronavirus vaccine before 2022, Prof. Jonathan Halevy, president of Shaare Zedek Medical Center, told The Jerusalem Post Sunday.

As Israel enjoys the effects of what Health Minister Yuli Edelstein defined as the “vaccination miracle” and an increasing number of activities have reopened under the green passport outline, the question of how long the inoculation’s protection will last becomes more relevant.

The vaccination certificate expires after six months and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has stressed several times that he is preparing the country for a situation where the whole population needs to be jabbed twice a year.

Medical experts emphasize that the data are insufficient, but have suggested that there might be reasons to be hopeful.

“No one knows the answer to the question of how long the vaccine will last, but we do have some circumstantial evidence to be more optimistic than to believe it will end in July,” Halevy said.

“Looking at the level of antibodies in those who recovered, we do notice that it decreases within a few months, but we also know that there are very few mentioned cases of reinfection – a few hundred people out of over 800,000 who got infected – and the same is happening with people who received the vaccine.”

He said that measurable antibodies are not

Gafni said.

However, when pressed for examples of how this would work, Gafni said he was unable to provide any further details at this time.

Gafni also declined to provide any information about what sorts of fees the bank would charge, although he said that customers would benefit from the bank’s low expense structure.

Since First Digital Bank received its regulatory approvals in December 2019, the company has recruited 140 employees and kept its original timeline of developing a complete banking system from scratch, the company said.

Shashua invested $60 million of his own capital into the initiative, and the bank is expected to raise additional funds in the near future to expand its operations.

Israel’s banking sector is dominated by five large banks that control 98% of the market, First Digital Bank said. The banks charge fees for transactions that rank among the highest in the Western world and are the frequent targets of public scorn.

Israel has been seeking for years to add new banks to the market to increase competition, with little progress. •