Some 7% of Israel’s serious and critical COVID-19 cases were vaccinated with three shots of the coronavirus vaccine, according to data released Friday morning by the Health Ministry. And the number of new and serious cases in general continues to decline.
“I cannot say that 7% is a lot,” Health Minister Director-General Prof. Nachman Ash told The Jerusalem Post. “The vaccine, even the third shot, does not work at 100%.” He said that there are always a small percentage of people who do not develop full immunity, such as those who are immunosuppressed.”
More than three million Israelis have been fully vaccinated with two shots and a booster. There were around 460 serious and critical cases on Friday, so 7% is around 32 people, meaning less than 0.00001% of people who have had a third shot are in serious condition.
“This is even better than we could have expected,” Ash said.
Another 17% were vaccinated with two shots more than six months ago, according to the data.
The majority (71%) were unvaccinated. The rest were recovered (3%), vaccinated and got sick before a full week had passed (2%) or recovered and vaccinated (1%).
Some 6.1 million Israelis have had a first shot, 5.7 million two shots and 3.7 million all three shots.
In general, the virus seems to be declining even as children have returned to school after the holidays.
There were 2,064 people diagnosed with the virus on Thursday, the Health Ministry said, with 2.4% of those screened testing positive. There are nearly 32,000 active cases of coronavirus in Israel. Of the 460 serious cases, 183 were intubated.
The death toll stood at 7,885.