“Israel, which has seen sev­er­al waves of the virus, had raced ahead of oth­er nations and giv­en the first dos­es of Pfiz­er’s two-dose vac­cine to more than a third of its pop­u­la­tion [of 9 mil­lion] by the end of Jan­u­ary,” accord­ing to the descrip­tion accom­pa­ny­ing The Wash­ing­ton Post’s glob­al coro­n­avirus track­er on Feb. 12 (found just below the sev­enth chart titled, “Case and death counts by coun­try”).

Ear­ly signs from the coun­try sug­gest that the large scale of vac­ci­na­tions have had an impact on the spread of the virus.

“We say with cau­tion, the mag­ic has start­ed,” Eran Segal, a data sci­en­tist with the Weiz­mann Insti­tute of Sci­ence in Rehovot, Israel, tweet­ed on Feb. 1. Segal point­ed to declines in new cas­es, hos­pi­tal­iza­tions and the num­ber of seri­ous­ly ill.

Accord­ing to the track­er’s sec­ond chart, “Vac­ci­na­tions by coun­try,” Israel leads on Feb. 12 with 41.6% of its pop­u­la­tion par­tial­ly vac­ci­nat­ed and 26.5% com­plete­ly vac­ci­nat­ed, fol­lowed by the Unit­ed Arab Emi­rates; the African coun­try of Sey­chelles, an arch­i­pel­ag­ic island coun­try in the Indi­an Ocean, and Britain. The Unit­ed States is fifth, with 11.1% of its pop­u­la­tion par­tial­ly vac­ci­nat­ed.

Coro­n­avirus case inci­dence

Under the fifth chart titled, “Glob­al hot spots for report­ed cas­es per capi­ta: – 7‑day rolling aver­age of dai­ly new report­ed cas­es per 100,000 res­i­dents,” Israel is sec­ond on Feb. 12 with 62 after the Czech Repub­lic with 69. 

How­ev­er, Israel is even more of an anom­aly due to the geo­graph­ic region in which it is locat­ed. See the fourth chart, “How the U.S. com­pares to oth­er regions” locat­ed just below the glob­al map for more. The “Mid­dle East and North Africa” aver­age 6 cas­es per 100k peo­ple on Feb. 12, the fifth-high­est after:

• U.S.: 31 per 100k
• Europe and Rus­sia: 19 per 100k
• South Amer­i­ca: 17 per 100k
• North Amer­i­ca, exclud­ing U.S.: 8 per 100k

Three regions aver­age only 1 case per 100k peo­ple, mean­ing the coro­n­avirus has large­ly been con­tained: South Asia, “East Asia and Ocea­nia,” and Sub-Saha­ran Africa. [South Africa, where the B1351 vari­ant strain is dom­i­nant, is aver­ag­ing 4 cas­es per 100k accord­ing to The New York Times glob­al track­er on Feb. 12.]

Vac­ci­na­tion suc­cess

“Cas­es of Covid-19 and hos­pi­tal­iza­tions dropped dra­mat­i­cal­ly among peo­ple who were vac­ci­nat­ed with­in just a few weeks, accord­ing to new stud­ies in Israel, where a rapid vac­cine roll­out has made it a kind of test lab­o­ra­to­ry for the world,” report Carl Zim­mer and Jerusalem-based cor­re­spon­dent Isabel Ker­sh­n­er, for The New York Times (source arti­cle) on Feb. 5. “And ear­ly data sug­gests that the vac­cines are work­ing near­ly as well in prac­tice as they did in clin­i­cal tri­als.”

The new Israeli study looked at nation­al health sta­tis­tics for peo­ple 60 years and old­er, who received the Pfiz­er-BioN­Tech vac­cine first because of their high risk.

“I find this pret­ty per­sua­sive that we are see­ing actu­al effects of pop­u­la­tion-lev­el vac­ci­na­tion,” said William Han­age, an epi­demi­ol­o­gist at the Har­vard T.H. Chan School of Pub­lic Health who was not involved with the Israeli study.

On [Jan. 25], the Israeli Health Min­istry and Mac­cabi Health Ser­vices, an Israeli health main­te­nance orga­ni­za­tion, “released new data on peo­ple who had received both dos­es of the vac­cine, show­ing extreme­ly high rates of effec­tive­ness,” report­ed Ker­sh­n­er ear­li­er.

The min­istry found that out of 428,000 Israelis who had received their sec­ond dos­es, a week lat­er only 63, or 0.014 per­cent, had con­tract­ed the virus. Sim­i­lar­ly, the Mac­cabi data showed that more than a week after hav­ing received the sec­ond dose, only 20 out of rough­ly 128,600 peo­ple, about 0.01 per­cent, had con­tract­ed the virus.

The results are star­tling in that they exceed­ed the 95% effi­ca­cy found in Pfiz­er’s late-stage vac­cine tri­als.

Israel is “Get­ting Back to Life”

One major rea­son for Israel’s suc­cess stems from the unique agree­ment that Prime Min­is­ter Ben­jamin Netanyahu reached with Pfiz­er Chair­man and CEO Albert Bourla last month “that will enable all Israelis above age 16 to be inoc­u­lat­ed against Covid-19 by the end of March,” report­ed Adam Ras­gon for the Times on Jan. 7.

“We are going to be the first coun­try to beat the coro­n­avirus,” Mr. Netanyahu declared in a state­ment at his office in Jerusalem.

The vow came after days in which health offi­cials warned that Israel’s sup­ply of vac­cines was dwin­dling

As part of the agree­ment with Pfiz­er, Mr. Netanyahu said that Israel would be an “inter­na­tion­al mod­el for quick­ly vac­ci­nat­ing an entire coun­try” and that Israeli author­i­ties would share data with the phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal giant to help “devel­op strate­gies to defeat” the virus.

On Jan. 7, Israelis who were 60 years and old­er were eli­gi­ble for vac­ci­na­tion. On Jan. 19, the age thresh­old dropped to 40 years and old­er and the Min­istry of Health pre­pared for admin­is­ter­ing 250,000 vac­cines per day in Oper­a­tion Get­ting Back to Life.

Third lock­down

Anoth­er fac­tor influ­enc­ing the infec­tion rate are the social and busi­ness restric­tions imposed by the Israeli gov­ern­ment. In fact, the nation’s third lock­down began the same day that the agree­ment with Pfiz­er was reached, Jan. 7. The exit from the lock­down began on Feb. 7.

How­ev­er, the authors of the study post­ed on Feb. “were able to iso­late oth­er fac­tors, includ­ing lock­downs, which also reduce the num­ber of infec­tions,” added Zim­mer and Ker­sh­n­er. “The researchers found that even tak­ing those fac­tors into account, the vac­cines had a sig­nif­i­cant impact.”

Vari­ants, Ultra-Ortho­dox Jews, Pales­tini­ans

Lau­rie Kell­man report­ed from Tel Aviv on the lim­its of vac­cines for the Asso­ci­at­ed Press. The vari­ant B.1.1.7, which orig­i­nat­ed in the U.K., “now accounts for up to 80 per­cent of the sam­ples test­ed in Israel,” not­ed Zim­mer and Ker­sh­n­er, which may explain why cas­es had been ris­ing among the unvac­ci­nat­ed pop­u­la­tion.

Anoth­er fac­tor is what many pub­lic health experts refer to as “pan­dem­ic fatigue,” although rebel­lion may seem more appro­pri­ate, illus­trat­ed by the defi­ance by ultra-Ortho­dox Jews of pub­lic gath­er­ing pro­hi­bi­tions and mask-wear­ing rules.

Kell­man expos­es the dis­par­i­ty in access to vac­cines with the Israeli-occu­pied West Bank and block­ad­ed Gaza Strip, as does Ras­gon for the Times. “That dis­par­i­ty has set off a roil­ing debate about Israel’s respon­si­bil­i­ties as an occu­py­ing pow­er in one of the world’s most pro­tract­ed ter­ri­to­r­i­al feuds,” reports Ras­gon.

“Get­ting back to life” has made Israel an inter­na­tion­al mod­el for vac­ci­na­tion, although it has yet to be reflect­ed in the infec­tion data for the coun­try. Dr. Nadav Davi­dovitch, a mem­ber of a gov­ern­ment advi­so­ry pan­el, told Kell­man that social dis­tanc­ing and masks will be required for the fore­see­able future.

“Vac­ci­na­tions are very impor­tant, but they are not going to solve all the prob­lems,” he said.

Relat­ed in Plan­e­ti­zen:

• Await­ing the Mutant Storm(s), Feb. 4, 2021
• Pan­dem­ic Endgame: The Goal­posts are Mov­ing, Decem­ber 30, 2020
• Pan­dem­ic Endgame, May 18, 2020
• Israel to Track Coro­n­avirus Using Cell­phone Data, March 24, 2020
• Israelis and Pales­tini­ans Find Com­mon Ground on Water, Decem­ber 10, 2013