Month: August 2021

JERUSALEM, Aug 24 (Reuters) - Less than a month into a COVID-19 vaccine booster drive, Israel is seeing signs of an impact on the country's high infection and severe illness rates fuelled by the fast-spreading Delta variant, officials and scientists say. Delta hit Israel in June, just as the country began to reap the benefits of one of the world's fastest vaccine roll-outs. With an open economy and most curbs scrapped, Israel went from single-digit daily infections and zero deaths to around 7,500 daily cases last week, 600 people hospitalized in serious condition and more than 150 people dying in that week alone. On July 30, it began administering a third dose of the Pfizer (PFE.N)/BioNtech (22UAy.DE) vaccine to people over 60, the first country to do so. On Thursday it expanded eligibili...

Sorry, Readability was unable to parse this page for content.

The United States has a far higher share of seniors without full vaccine protection than many other wealthy countries, a key risk factor driving serious Covid-19 illness and death, a Times analysis shows. As the Delta variant has torn across the country, America’s pace of vaccinations has sped up after months of relative stagnation, and full federal approval of the Pfizer vaccine on Monday could extend that momentum. Just over half of Americans are now fully vaccinated. But national averages mask the high rate of older Americans who remain deeply vulnerable. Older people still account for most Covid-19 deaths, and in many counties, especially in the South and Mountain West, seniors without full vaccination make up more than 10 percent of the total population. ...

A new study suggests that fully vaccinated people might not be as contagious as unvaccinated people infected with the coronavirus. Do fully vaccinated people spread COVID as much as unvaccinated? The preprint study — which has not been peer-reviewed but has been published on medrxiv — suggested that fully vaccinated people might not spread the coronavirus as much as unvaccinated people. Specifically, the study said that “rare vaccine breakthrough infections occur, but infectious virus shedding is reduced in these cases.” The study found that the COVID-19 vaccines are highly effective at stopping death and severe illness, but breakthrough cases do happen (although they remain rare). The researchers studied 161 breakthrough cases out of 24,706 vaccinated people, who were h...