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VOICE OF THE COMMUNITY 21 January 2021
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8 Shvat 5781
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Issue No.1194
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@JewishNewsUK
It’s week two of our 120 Over 80 celebration Pages 13-15
Israeli data throws UK vaccine plans off course Fears over second dose delay after study of 200,000 people Israeli vaccine data showing lower-thanexpected immunity against coronavirus after one dose could radically alter Britain’s policy of delaying the second shot so more people can have the first, writes Stephen Oryszczuk. Israel’s speedy response to the virus has led to it becoming “ground zero for vaccination data”, allowing Benjamin Netanyahu to negotiate an expedited shipment of the Pfizer/BioNTech drug by offering efficacy results in return. Those results have now been published and the UK’s chief scientific adviser, Sir Patrick Vallance, this week said he would look hard at the figures coming out of the Jewish state, where almost a quarter of the population have now had the jab. He was facing questions from former health minister Philip Dunne, who said Israeli data from the Pfizer vaccine showed only 33 percent efficacy after the first dose, compared with the 89 percent claimed by the British government.
Preparing the jab at a vaccine centre in Tel Aviv
“You don’t expect to get protection in the first 10 days because it hasn’t had a chance for the immune system to build up,” Vallance told Sky News. “Some people may have been infected before they had the vaccine. If you take from Day 10, it looks more like the 89 percent, that’s the clinical trial data.” He added: “I don’t know exactly what Israel are looking at. If they are looking from Day 0 then that doesn’t give an exact comparison, but we need to look at it very carefully. We’ll get the information from Israel, from us, and see what’s happening.” The UK says delaying the second dose by up to 12 weeks gives more people the protection afforded by the first jab. But Ronni Gamzu, of Tel Aviv’s Sourasky hospital, said the UK’s 89 percent efficacy claim after one dose was “very optimistic” and did not match Israel’s “real-world findings”. Likewise, Israel’s coronavirus tsar Nachman Ash said a single dose appeared “less effective than we had thought”, and lower than Pfizer suggested, as the country recorded another 10,000 infections on Monday. Pfizer advises doctors to give the two doses three weeks apart. Preliminary data from the first 600,000 Israeli recipients suggested that the jab halves the chances of infection within 14 days of the first dose. Of the positive tests, 4,500 came within seven days, with 244 hospitalisations, most of whom are thought to have caught the virus before they had the jab. From eight days, 124 people were hospitalised. Only seven more were admitted after 14 days. Meanwhile, the latest Jewish death toll from Covid-19 in the UK rose to 740 in the week ending 15 January, with 49 funerals, up from 43 funerals the week before. These are the highest weekly figures since April last year.
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His left hand resting on a leather-bound Bible that has been in the Biden family since 1893, his right hand solemnly raised, Joe Biden was duly sworn in as the 46th President of the United States yesterday. Earlier, his predecessor Donald Trump exited the White House via the back door. Reports and analysis inside
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