Emmanuel Macron will he take an example from Israel in terms of vaccination? The Head of State, who is due to speak to the French this Tuesday evening, could announce the conditioning of obtaining the health pass for the third dose for people affected by the recall campaign.
A measure that would be directly inspired by Israel, which launched the recall campaign at the end of July, before linking the third dose to the health pass, in early October. As a result, this Monday, November 8, the Israelis were more than 42% to have received their booster injection, according to health authorities. Review of the strategy adopted by the Hebrew state.
A tense health context
Scrutinized for nearly two years by the whole world, Israel has acted as a laboratory for the rest of the planet, massively vaccinating from December 2020, after an agreement with the pharmaceutical giant Pfizer. If the epidemic slowed sharply in the spring in the country – the Hebrew state even bordering on collective immunity – the appearance of the Delta variant restarted the circulation of the virus at the beginning of the summer. While a dozen cases were identified in early June in Israel, the figure exceeded the 2,000 mark in July.
At the same time, Israeli scientists claimed in a study published in The New England Journal of Medicine, that immunity to the coronavirus vaccine worsened over the months, despite the two doses, leading to the more frequent onset of severe forms. “The effectiveness of the Pfizer vaccine decreases after five months. When the immunity wanes and a contagious variant (like the Delta) circulates, it’s a disaster, ”explained Gabi Barbash, former director general of the Israeli Ministry of Health and currently at the Weizmann Research Institute. , from AFP.
Faced with the spectacular increase in cases, the Israeli authorities decided at the end of July to launch a campaign to allow people aged 60 and over to be injected a third dose of the vaccine. “At the time, the difficulty for Israel was linked to the lack of medical studies or examples abroad on the third dose. Israel was the first country in the world to mass vaccinate and so found itself six months later to be the first to have to manage the booster dose, ”said Julien Bahloul, specialist for the Israeli company at 20 minutes.
Enlargement to the whole population
Despite this recall campaign for the over 60s, contaminations continued to climb this summer in Israel, with more than 11,000 daily cases recorded in early August. An increase that prompted the government of Naftali Bennett to gradually lower the age of the recall to 50 years, mid-August, then 30 years a week later, before opening it at the end of August to the entire population from 12 years old. . But the Hebrew state did not stop there. To encourage the population to take the booster dose, the government in early October conditioned the obtaining of the “Green pass” – the equivalent of the French health pass – to the injection of a third dose. “At the beginning of October, the government canceled all the health passes in force and forced the population to download a new one, therefore accessible only to vaccinated with three doses or two doses of less than six months”, details the specialist of the Israeli company .
But that’s not all. After closing the borders and reimposing the quarantine on return from travel this summer, the government changed its strategy in September, canceling the quarantine for travelers vaccinated with three doses or two doses less than six months ago. “The effect was immediate: the same evening, there were huge queues at the vaccination centers. The Israelis wanted to be vaccinated before the holidays of the Jewish holidays to travel, “assured Julien Bahloul, who added:” The deal was simple: we were vaccinated or we were confined during the Jewish holidays. As a result, in early October, more than 3.4 million Israelis had received their third dose of vaccine against the coronavirus, or nearly 40% of the population.
A third effective dose
Several months after the launch of the recall campaign, the third dose seems to be bearing fruit: the number of daily contaminations and serious cases in Israel has decreased and stabilized. Since mid-October, the number of daily contaminations has dropped back below the 1,000 cases mark. In mid-September, the rate of severe cases was around 4 per 100,000 inhabitants among “triple vaccinated”, against 35 per 100,000 for people who received one or two doses, and 150 per 100,000 for non-vaccinated, according to Israeli health authorities. .
“If you are 60 years of age and over and you are not vaccinated, you are 35 times more likely to have serious effects, and eight times more likely if you have received two doses, than if you have received the booster dose. », Detailed Cyrille Cohen, professor at Bar Ilan University and member of the government’s scientific committee on vaccination, to AFP.
Some specialists, such as Professor Salman Zarka, believe that a fourth dose will even be needed in a few months due to the appearance of new variants and the decline in vaccine immunity. “It seems that every few months – it could be once a year, every five or six months – we will need a new injection,” he said in early September. to Times of Israel.