Israel’s Pandemic Control Committee Recommends 4th COVID Shot For Israelis Aged 18 And Over

JERUSALEM (VINnews) — Israel’s Health Ministry has received a recommendation from its Pandemic Control Committee to roll out the fourth coronavirus shot for Israelis aged 18 or above, on condition that five months have passed since they received the previous shot or recovered from COVID. The recommendation requires the final authorization of Health Ministry Director-General Nachman Ash.

The ministry reported Sunday that the fourth vaccine dose administered so far to people aged 60 and over or with weak immune systems had successfully protected against serious illness. The ministry reported threefold protection against serious illness and twofold protection against infection from the Omicron variant after comparing those who received the fourth dose with those who received the third dose more than four months ago.

The figures were based on 400,000 Israelis who received a fourth dose and 600,000 who received three doses, with the ministry stressing that the methodology was similar to that employed by the experts in previous papers they have published in the peer-reviewed New England Journal of Medicine.

Initial results had demonstrated that the fourth dose of the vaccine did not offer protection against infection by the Omicron variant, but the new results which factor people who received the fourth shot and are at least a week after the shot show that they have more immunity to infection than the general public.

Health Ministry statistics released Tuesday morning showed 83,613 new infections recorded a day earlier, the second day in a row with over 83,000 fresh cases. With more than 439,000 PCR and antigen tests carried out on Sunday, the positivity rate stood at 21.83%.

As of Tuesday morning, 580,369 Israelis were actively infected, with 2,256 hospitalized, of whom 845 were in serious condition and 177 on ventilators.

In the past week, 125 Israelis with COVID died, bringing the total death toll since the start of the pandemic to 8,487. Over the past two weeks, some 900,000 Israelis have tested positive for COVID, though experts believe that the actual figure is several times higher.