Short story: vaccines work. Data from Israel’s launch of the Pfizer vaccine, carried out in a large campaign, show that it is also working fast. Only the first single shot significantly reduces the risk of transmission, with estimates ranging from 33% to 60%. This is exactly the impact we would have hoped to see from a vaccine to a pandemic, but so far it has not been quantified.
This calls into question the slow launch of mass vaccinations:
Initial data from Israel’s vaccination campaign show that the Pfizer coronavirus vaccine fights infections by about 50% 14 days after the first of the two vaccines, a senior Health Ministry official said on Tuesday as serious cases of COVID- 19 in the country, daily infections and total activities. all cases reach the peaks of all times.
Sharon Alroy-Preis, head of the Ministry of Health’s public health department, told Channel 12 News that the data were preliminary and based on coronavirus test results for both those who received the vaccine and those who did not.
Other data, somewhat to the contrary, were released by Israeli health care organizations on Tuesday night. Channel 13 News said that according to figures published by Clalit, Israel’s largest health care provider, the chance of a person being infected with coronavirus decreased by 33% 14 days after being vaccinated. Separate figures recorded by health care provider Maccabi and broadcast by Channel 12 showed that the vaccine caused a 60% decrease in the chances of infection 14 days after taking the first shot.
As mentioned, Israel’s transmission rates have not shown the full impact of this phenomenon, but the news is encouraging nonetheless. It suggests that large-scale vaccination programs would greatly slow the rate of community transmission almost immediately and that the second blow would eliminate it if it were offered broadly enough. Israel reached 20% of its population with just the first blow, which is much further than the US has succeeded, but Israel’s population is much smaller and more concentrated.
The lesson here is to vaccinate as many people as possible with their first shot. The CDC may have taken a look at Israeli data to change its policy yesterday, but this seems to have been more about the perverse incentives of the stricter implementation regime they enacted for the first time. This has led to the destruction of doses to avoid draconian punishments for out-of-regulation vaccinations, a result that is not only infuriating, but completely counterproductive. Now, New York is dismantling these perverse incentives, at least in terms of inoculating the elderly and those with severe comorbidities, but only after a huge public reaction to the ridiculous results of their heavy application.
This plan may be too restrictive. If we want to reduce transmission rates in order to fully reopen our economies, we must quickly inoculate our entire populations. That means solving supply and distribution problems, of course, but the best plan might be to hand over these doses to existing private sector distribution channels and let them pass completely, first come, first served. Let Walgreens, CVS, Walmart, Target and other pharmacies receive it from the manufacturer in enough arms to seriously bend the downward curve. This will also help protect the vulnerable, making COVID-19 less obvious to the population, perhaps immediately after a week or two after a serious and wide-ranging launch begins.
Let’s do it. Quick.