Mass vaccination plan pays off in Israel as cases continue to fall

Coronavirus infections are still falling in Israel 40 days after the lifting of lockdowns, said a health expert at the Weizmann Institute.

The optimistic assessment on the country’s strategy of mass inoculation comes after the institute, near Tel Aviv, analysed the latest Covid-19 case data.

Dr Eran Segal, a scientist at the institute, said on Twitter that Israel’s R-number was still falling amid a national mass vaccination campaign. Scientists define the R number as the average number of people to whom one infected person will pass a virus.

Dr Segal’s assessment highlighted that hospital admissions were down by 85 per cent, a critical data point for intensive care wards, which have been overwhelmed by Covid patients.

If the positive indications hold up in the coming days and weeks, it could be significant for the many countries now pursuing mass vaccination as a pillar of their pandemic mitigation strategies.

There have been fears that new, rapidly spreading strains could complicate such efforts.

Israel worked quickly to immunise its population and has already inoculated nearly 60 per cent of its nine million population with at least one dose of vaccine.

In February, a real-world test of Pfizer-BioNTech’s Covid-19 vaccine in Israel found it was 94 per cent effective at preventing severe disease after two doses.

But there may be stumbling blocks ahead, including vaccine hesitancy among some segments of society. Initially, Israel was able to immunise on average 1.5 per cent of its population per day, but this rate has fallen to 0.2 per cent per day.

Potential problems reaching 70 per cent immunisation among the population, a figure experts say is crucial to control the virus, have led to growing public controversy over “vaccine hesitancy”.

The term is used to refer to the refusal to be immunised due to concerns about side effects, a lack of concern about the virus or a belief in conspiracy theories.

Last week, an Israeli labour tribunal ruled that a teacher who refused to be vaccinated would not be allowed to work, after a local council’s decision to bar her from attending school. This could set the stage for a legal battle over individual rights, reported Israeli newspaper Haaretz.

The case is expected to be taken to the Israeli Attorney General’s office, which said last month that unvaccinated teachers could not be barred from school unless new legislation was introduced.