According to the report, vaccine efficacy is significantly lower than what the country experienced in March, down to about 80% against serious symptoms and 90% against mortality – compared to over 97% effective against both in previous months.
The report did not provide extensive details supporting the statement (nor was peer-reviewed as it happens with medical articles published in academic journals).
However, the Health Ministry and several experts have been stressing that during the fourth wave which started in Israel around mid-June, the protection granted by the vaccine has been declining.
Data published by the ministry last week showed that the Pfizer coronavirus vaccine remains 91% effective against developing serious cases of the disease. However, its effectiveness at stopping infection declined from 90%-95% to 39%. The vaccine was also found to be 40% effective against symptomatic COVID-19 and 88% effective against hospitalization. In addition, for people vaccinated more than six months ago, the effectiveness of the vaccine at stopping the disease dropped as low as 16%.
So far, the increase in serious morbidity has remained limited - at the beginning of June there were some 20 serious patients with less than 200 active cases in the country, now there are 138 of them with over 13,000 active cases. However, in the past few days the number of serious patients has increased faster and faster, growing more than two-fold in a week.
“The morbidity is increasing and is expected to continue to increase without imposing further restrictions,” the expert wrote. “A similar increase is expected in serious morbidity and respiratory failure.”
While so far the number of ventilated patients has not grown as fast as the other figures, the report also suggested that the delay in the increase is similar to the one experience in the July wave last year.
In addition, the scientists expressed skepticism at the comparison between Israel and Great Britain, where the highly contagious Delta variant spread earlier, causing a spike in cases – but not a similar one in hospitalizations and deaths – and where the outbreak has been receding.
The drop in cases, they said “may be due to local factors, there is no basis to assume that a similar stop will occur in the country.”
Without significant steps, the report concluded, the number of serious patients could reach 200-400 by mid-August.
Maayan Hoffman contributed to this report.