Don’t make our costly mistake, Britain: Israeli scientist Professor ERAN SEGAL gives a warning on front line of new Afghan surge
There is no question that Israel – the country that led the way with a Covid vaccine roll out for its nine million population – is now experiencing a fourth wave of infections.
And, as is the case in several other countries such as France and Iran, it is deadlier than anyone predicted.
We are seeing the effectiveness of the double Pfizer/BioNTech jab – the vaccine most widely used in my country – waning six months after the second jabs were administered.
That fact, and the spread of the much more infectious Delta variant, is the reason for a sharp rise in infections and hospitalisations especially among the elderly and vulnerable.
Israel is responding with a vigorous programme of booster jabs and I believe our experience may have several implications for Britain and other countries.
My message is two-fold. Firstly, countries must redouble their efforts to persuade vaccine-refuseniks to get their inoculations. Secondly, a policy of booster jabs must be considered for the elderly and those with underlying health conditions. It would be wise to act now to prevent a deadly wave in the UK.
Many scientists and clinicians in Israel were calling for renewed public efforts to persuade the ‘vaccine-resistant’ in the population to have the jab weeks ago. This could have prevented our fourth wave but unfortunately it did not happen.
Now infection rates are rapidly climbing towards the peak last seen in January. At the worst point of the third wave, we were seeing up to 10,000 new cases a day. On Monday there were nearly 9,000. Tragically, that is causing an increasing number of deaths.
Just a few months ago, we were cautiously hopeful that our stringent policy of vaccination was going to beat the virus. But now we are seeing that the combination of a highly transmittable variant, reduced vaccine effectiveness and the 15 per cent of those eligible for the vaccine who remain unvaccinated has changed the course of the pandemic.
We’re only just waking up to these consequences in Israel where, as the first country in the world to vaccinate most of our population, we are also the first to see the impact of the waning effect. Other nations have to take notice and act now.
There’s another unknown in the mix. When we began vaccinating, the Delta variant had not yet surfaced.
Other variants are constantly evolving around the world. What we have yet to find out is whether there will be even more aggressive new variants. That’s the bad news. But the situation is far from hopeless. After a slow start, Israel’s booster jab programme is now operating at maximum capacity. Within two weeks, all the over-60s and over-50s will have been offered the booster.
I’m cautiously hopeful by the time you read this, almost all the over-40s will have been be offered it too.
However, this is not a clinical trial under controlled conditions. It is happening in the real world which means there could be many other factors at play.
Tottenham Hotspur Stadium hosted its third mass COVID-19 vaccination clinic today, in partnership with the NHS and Haringey Council
Even so, there is growing confidence that the boosters are already having a positive effect. Some commentators are worrying that we will be locked into a cycle of top-up jabs for years to come but that might not be the case: it could be that the immunity effect is cumulative and lasts longer with each new vaccination.
We still don’t know and will need more time. One thing is certain: even if booster jabs are good, first vaccinations are better – both for the individual and for the country, since they increase a person’s immunity from zero to being full vaccinated.
In Israel, there are 1.1million people aged 12 and over who have not been vaccinated. More than half of them are under 30.
I don’t believe that all these people are committed anti-vaxxers. Most just haven’t bothered. But that attitude is hitting the whole country hard now and we must redouble efforts to encourage people to accept their responsibility and get jabbed.
Many people are worried that another lockdown is coming. While it is too early to tell, I believe that, thanks to the boosters, we should be over the worst by mid-September and without a lockdown… though this is not yet certain.
What is certain is that Britain has a chance to learn from our mistakes and avoid the pain of a fourth wave. And the time to start a campaign of booster jabs may be now.
- ERAN SEGAL is a professor at the Weizmann Institute of Science and an advisor to the Israeli government in its response to the pandemic.
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