3rd Booster Shot in Israel Not Effective?

10 August 2021

The media is again spreading news about Israel's vaccine programme. This time, it is about the 3rd booster shot using Pfizer. Again, Israel Times is the first to report. There was not much news in other medias as before. The news were kind but the forumers were not. Many, especially those from the Twitters have blasted out without even checking what was reported.

The Times of Israel

This report originated again from the Times of Israel. It has the following qualifications:

a) Limited data not enough to draw conclusions on booster’s effectiveness;

b) Fourteen Israelis have been diagnosed with COVID-19;

c) Not clear whether the 14 infected before or after having the booster;

d) 11 of the 14 cases were over the age of 60;

e) two that were hospitalized were over 60; lastly,

f) Some 420,000 Israelis have been administered a third booster shot so far, in a drive that began last week.

In other words, it is advising readers not to rush into making a conclusion.

Are the results so far any good?

Without adding more, the result of the 3rd booster shot was better than expected for the following reasons:

a) The over-all effectiveness of 0.003% (14/420000) was 72 times better than the 0.24% obtained during the trial test of the 3 common vaccines in the US;

 

b) 11 of the 14 infected were of elderly who were over 60s;

Report Said Pfizer's Efficacy is only 39% Against Delta

Why Booster Shots people still can get infected?

One must know that vaccine does not offer 100% protection against Covid-19 infection. Vaccine helps human body to produce anti-bodies to fight Covid. The anti-body amount will depend on the physical conditions of the human. Elderly will produce less. Those with underlying diseases such as diabetes will produce even less antibodies.

The Israel's result is giving yet another encouraging news about the use of booster shots to tame Covid-19. This time, it worked among elderly people.

Any other countries have examples?

Bahrain and UAE switched to Pfizer as 3rd booster after having majority of their citizens taken SinoPharm. The switch for Bahrain was around 2 June 2021.

https://www.voanews.com/covid-19-pandemic/bahrain-offers-pfizer-biontech-boosters-those-previously-vaccinated-chinese-shot
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There was a similar report from Reuter.

https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/uae-bahrain-make-pfizerbiontech-shot-available-those-who-got-sinopharm-vaccine-2021-06-03/

The real World Chart of Bahrain is telling us that Pfizer as 3rd booster shot worked very well to tame the infection as well as the death rate. It was claimed that Bahrain offered Pfizer as 3rd shot because there were worries growing over China's SinoPharm shots.

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