Yes - just like the flu. But no probs - just get a booster. And then probably an annual.
Israeli Health Ministry approves covid booster shot for older population
A woman receives her third dose of a coronavirus vaccine at Sheba Medical Center in Ramat Gan, Israel, on July 14. (Amir Levy/Getty Images)
By Shira Rubin
July 29, 2021 at 1:34 p.m. EDT
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TEL AVIV — Israel's Health Ministry on Thursday announced plans to start a coronavirus booster campaign for adults over 60 who received their second shot at least five months earlier, because of risks posed by the vaccines' apparent waning efficacy and the current wave of covid-19 cases.
In discussions with Israel's four national health funds, the ministry said the inoculation campaign would begin Sunday and would be available at nursing homes and government-funded health clinics.
"Reality has proven it: The vaccines are safe; they are proven to protect against serious illness and death," Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said in a televised statement Thursday. "As with the flu vaccine, which needs to be re-administered from time to time, so too is the case here."
Bennett said Israel's 60-year-old president, Isaac Herzog, would be the first to receive the booster shot, on Friday morning.
He urged all eligible Israelis to get vaccinated if they hadn't yet done so and encouraged them to contact their elderly relatives to make an appointment for a third dose.
"We must ensure that vaccinations outpace the pandemic," he said.
Just before midnight Wednesday, ministry experts had agreed to recommend, by an overwhelming majority, administering a third dose of vaccine to older adults.
This action coincided with the release of a paper by executives from the pharmaceutical giant Pfizer reporting that its coronavirus vaccine had strong but slightly diminished effectiveness six months after inoculation.
The company suggested that booster shots would soon be needed.
On Thursday morning, the head of the Israeli nursing homes union said that facilities across the country were already preparing the logistics to administer the booster shots.
Despite the lack of regulatory approval in the United States and Europe and the absence of definitive data about the effectiveness of booster shots in preventing serious illness and mortality, the experts concluded that promoting boosters for older Israelis could offer the best chance to stem the recent spike in infections.
In the past six weeks, cases in Israel have jumped from the single digits to more than 2,000 a day. The soaring cases, mostly because of the delta variant, have not led to a corresponding rise in the number of seriously ill and hospitalized patients.
Health Ministry data shows that recent infections in the vaccinated occurred mostly among those who were first to get inoculations, in January and February — priority groups that included most people with preexisting conditions.
