New studies: COVID-19 booster shots in Israel appear to be lowering new infections

Israel’s COVID-19 boosters are preventing infections, new studies suggest Protection increases in the weeks following a third dose, but it’s unclear how long the effect will last newsfromscience

Israel’s nationwide campaign to provide its population with COVID-19 vaccine boosters appears to benefit recipients. A third dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine significantly lowers the risk of infection, according to two new studies.

A report for the country’s Ministry of Health, posted Friday, showed a third dose reduced recipients’ risk of testing positive for SARS-CoV-2 by more than 10-fold 2 weeks later. And in a preprint posted yesterday, researchers used data from a health maintenance organization (HMO) to calculate that a third dose roughly halves a person’s chances of testing positive for the virus starting 1 week after the shot and further reduces it after the second week.

Israel’s case numbers and hospitalizations continue to climb as the Delta variant spreads. The country recorded 10,947 new cases on Monday, more than on any other day since the start of the pandemic. But the number of cases in older people began to slow in the weeks after 31 July, when third doses of the messenger RNA vaccine were offered to people ages 60 and older—a sign that boosters may be working.

On 29 August, Israel announced it would expand the booster program to everyone over the age of 12 whose second dose was at least 5 months earlier. More than 2.1 million people have already received a third dose, the government said yesterday. ...