Israeli medical experts advise the government to slow down on second booster shot.

By Lauren Marcus, World Israel News

As Israel becomes the first country in the world to roll out a fourth coronavirus jab for people with preexisting health conditions, medical workers and seniors, some immunologists say that the government is not acting according to science.

Israel’s decision to mandate a third booster shot for anyone over the age of 12 also sparked backlash from immunologists, physicians, and health officials, but the government appears to have adopted a vaccine-first strategy.

Prime Minister Naftali Bennett has repeatedly maintained that the Jewish State’s pandemic management plan hinges on regular booster shots for millions of Israelis, despite statements from the World Health Organization that such a policy is not sustainable.

“The Israeli government is not taking into consideration any opinions given by immunologists,” Doron Melamed, a professor of immunology at the Technion–Israel Institute of Technology, told Ynet.

“They are biased toward physicians and others who are not immunologists,” he added.

Melamed said that the government was being short-sighted, as epidemiologists around the world increasingly concur that “highly repeated vaccination may be harmful in the end.”

Because vaccines create a specific immune system response, he explained, too many doses can create a reaction in which people are less able to naturally fight off variants.

“There are vaccines that we get once in a lifetime, and there are vaccines that we need to get every five years,” he said.

Whether or not multiple COVID-19 vaccinations are necessary is “something that needs to be measured.”

Hadassah Medical Center epidemiologist Dr. Ronit Calderon-Margalit, who is also a lecturer at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, told Ynet that the government appeared to have made the decision to move forward with a fourth shot “based on the success of the past shots.”

The problem, Calderon-Margalit said, is that the government did not conduct enough studies about the impact or efficacy of a second booster shot.

“It is the responsibility of the government to continue to observe those who received the fourth shot” before recommending that wider swathes of the population receive it, she added.

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“We can say with confidence that we are on our way out of this wave,” Health Ministry director-general Nachman Ash said.

By Tobias Siegal, World Israel News

Head of Public Health Services Dr. Sharon Alroy-Preis said on Tuesday during the annual Jerusalem Post conference that Israel was getting close to reaching herd immunity against coronavirus, Maariv reported.

Addressing the third wave of coronavirus in Israel, Alroy-Preis said that even then, “there were enough people who were vaccinated … to reach herd immunity,” which is why Israel was not in a hurry to vaccinate its younger population at the time.

“But with the Delta variant, infection rates became much higher, so the numbers we needed in order to reach herd immunity were higher as well,” she explained.

Now, Alroy-Preis said, Israel may once again be on the way to reaching herd immunity.

Similar comments were made by Health Ministry director-general Nachman Ash in an interview given to 103 FM Radio earlier Tuesday.

“We’re seeing that the statistics are dropping, yesterday as well. We can say with confidence that we are on our way out of this wave,” he said.

However, in the same interview, he also mentioned a new variant recently discovered in Europe – AY.4.2 – which may pose a new risk in the near future.

“We need to learn what the clinical significance of each variant is,” Ash said. “I can’t say much right now. We will need to learn it and see if it’s dangerous to us or not,” he added, noting that some variants proved to be “significant,” like the Delta variant, while others were not.

On Thursday, for the first time since the beginning of the fourth wave, Health Ministry data showed that no COVID-related deaths had been reported in Israel in the past 24 hours.

The number of serious cases, which has been steadily declining for the last three weeks, reached 403 on Thursday, 60 cases less than the number registered only a week ago.

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