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Israel’s vaccine programme gives hope to the world

Hospital admissions among the old have fallen by a third since their peak

OVER ONE-THIRD of Israel’s population has received a vaccination against covid-19 since December 19th. Binyamin Netanyahu, the prime minister, has campaigned heavily for vaccinations, personally lobbying the boss of Pfizer, an American drugmaker, to secure early shipments of its vaccine. He was the first Israeli to be jabbed, live on television. He promised that “Israel will be the first country in the world” to emerge from the pandemic—by the end of March. (Conveniently, this is when Israel will be holding a parliamentary election and Mr Netanyahu believes success will boost his Likud party.) This was a bold claim considering nobody was sure that vaccines would successfully lower infection rates by enough to lift lockdown restrictions.

There is now evidence that the vaccination programme is having an impact. Analysis from Eran Segal, a computational biologist at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, and his colleagues, has found that covid-19 cases are falling appreciably among old people in Israel. The effect is especially pronounced in hospital admissions: among people aged over 60 severe hospital cases have fallen by 26% since their peak on January 19th (see chart). In contrast, among those between 40 and 59—a group further back in the queue to be vaccinated—such severe cases have increased by 13%.

The vaccination programme, rather than the national lockdown enacted a week later (and strengthened on January 5th), is the likeliest cause. As Israel’s vaccination programme progresses down the generations, cases and hospitalisations are expected to fall further across the board. Even though Israel has been giving out doses to nearly 2% of its population every day for the past fortnight, on average, there remains some way to go: 65% of people over 60 have received both doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine; less than one-third of 30-year-olds have received their first.

Despite the encouraging falls in cases and hospital admissions attributed to vaccinations, political factors have hampered progress in other respects. Mr Netanyahu has been eager to highlight a diplomatic agreement he signed with the United Arab Emirates. Tens of thousands of Israelis flocked to Dubai for shopping holidays, and some returned with new, more infectious variants of covid-19. The government closed down its sole international airport on January 24th. And Palestinian authorities in the occupied West Bank and Gaza have barely started vaccinating their populations.

The new variants have spread quickly, largely because they are harder to contain and partly because some people have flouted lockdown restrictions. Of particular concern are ultra-Orthodox neighbourhoods (accounting for about 12% of Israel’s population), where schools and public gatherings have continued, and infection rates are double those of the rest of the country. One particularly controversial gathering was the mass funeral in Jerusalem of the 99-year-old Rabbi Meshulam Dovid Soloveitchik, attended by an estimated 20,000 ultra-Orthodox men on January 31st. Mr Netanyahu’s coalition relies on the support of ultra-Orthodox parties and he has been reluctant to enforce the lockdown on their supporters.

Declining infections and hospital admissions will give hope to Mr Netanyahu, and the rest of the world. Where Israel has blazed a trail in its ability to distribute and administer vaccines quickly, other, bigger, countries are following. Britain and America have now given at least one dose to 14% and 8% of their populations respectively. In the coming weeks the magic of these vaccine programmes should slowly begin to reveal itself.

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