Israel may become the frist country with COVID-19 immunization

Israel may become the frist country with COVID-19 immunization. Nature: The first country to rely on vaccines to achieve universal immunization may appear.

As countries around the world launch COVID-19 vaccines and vaccination plans, researchers are eagerly paying attention to the impact of vaccination on the COVID-19 pandemic.

Recently, Israeli researchers reported preliminary data after the COVID-19 vaccination. The data shows that people who have received the n COVID-19 vaccine are about one-third less likely to be positive than the unvaccinated COVID-19 virus (SARS-CoV-2).

The coverage of the vaccine, the effectiveness of the vaccine, and the spread of the virus, etc., these factors determine how long it takes for scientists to judge the impact of vaccination on the COVID-19 pandemic.

Israel and the UAE are the world leaders in vaccine coverage. Of course, this is mainly because these two countries are small, have small populations, and are relatively affluent. Both countries have vaccinated more than 2 million people with the COVID-19 vaccine, accounting for about 2 million people in the country. A quarter.
Other countries, such as the United Kingdom and Norway, have targeted their vaccination programs to high-risk groups. The United Kingdom has vaccinated more than 4 million people, most of whom are health care workers and the elderly, including those living in nursing homes. . Norway vaccinated all residents (approximately 40,000) living in nursing homes.

First result

Israel is the first to report the impact of the COVID-19 vaccine on people outside of clinical trials. The results show that vaccination with the mRNA vaccine developed by Pfizer-BioNTech can prevent infection or limit its duration.

In a preliminary analysis of 200,000 elderly people over 60 vaccinated against the COVID-19 virus, compared with 200,000 people who did not receive the vaccine, the researchers found that the probability of a positive test for the COVID-19 virus two weeks after the first injection Reduced by 33%. This shows that vaccination does have a positive impact on the entire population, and the current data does not include the effect of the second dose of the vaccine.

Previous clinical trials have shown that Pfizer-BioNTech’s mRNA vaccine is about 90% effective in preventing COVID-19s. The preliminary vaccination data in Israel shows that the vaccine can indeed provide certain protection to prevent infection.

At present, more than 75% of the elderly in Israel have received the COVID-19 vaccine, and it is expected that the hospitalization rate of the vaccinated elderly will decline in the next few weeks.

Most countries/regions have prioritized vaccinating the n COVID-19 vaccine to people at high risk of serious illness or death. Therefore, the first evidence of whether the vaccine is effective in these countries or regions is to see whether the number of hospitalizations has been reduced, and whether it has reduced the number of deaths.

Achieve herd immunity

If the vaccine can effectively prevent the COVID-19 infection, then the indirect benefits of the vaccine (protecting the unvaccinated people) will only be revealed after a sufficient proportion of people have been vaccinated, which is the so-called “herd immunity.”

Israel may be the first country to see the impact of vaccination on the entire population. This is because extensive coverage is achieved through highly effective vaccines. When enough people are immunized against the new coronavirus, herd immunity can be achieved without further control of transmission.

The first signs of this indirect protection may appear in specific populations who have received extensive vaccinations, such as health care and long-term care workers and their families.

However, the current decline in the number of COVID-19 infections makes it difficult to distinguish vaccine factors from other public health interventions (such as isolation and lockdown), because infectious diseases are very difficult to predict and ultimately require a lot of data to eliminate many unpredictability.

Future challenges

Although the epidemic situation in Europe is still severe now, but in countries such as Norway, the COVID-19 epidemic has been effectively controlled, so it is difficult to determine the effect of the vaccine on reducing the overall COVID-19 infection in such a place.

Before the entire country reaches high vaccine coverage, the rampant spread of the new coronavirus also complicates such investigations. For example, vaccinated health care workers may be able to protect family members from infection, but when the virus is everywhere, there are still many opportunities to infect family members.

Raina MacIntyre, an epidemiologist at the University of New South Wales in Australia, said that with the exception of Israel, vaccines will not soon have an impact on the spread of the virus, because many other countries are using much less efficient vaccines that are unlikely to control infection.

Vaccines that are less effective in preventing infection have less impact on the spread of the new coronavirus in the population. However, even with less effective vaccines, the level of vaccination may still have a large impact on deaths

(source:internet, reference only)

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