TEL AVIV – Israel’s Sheba Hospital began a clinical trial on Monday to test the effectiveness of the fourth dose of the BioNTech/Pfizer vaccine against Covid-19. It will be applied to six thousand people, including 150 health professionals.
The study, the first of its kind in the world, is being carried out in coordination with the Israeli Ministry of Health, which is awaiting the results to start administering the fourth dose to the population over 60 years old, with immunity problems and health workers, as recommended last week by the committee of experts that advises the government on responding to the Covid-19 pandemic.
— This study will test the effect of the fourth dose of vaccine on the level of antibodies, preventing infection and verifying its safety — says Professor Gili Regev-Yochay, a doctor at Sheba, outside Tel Aviv.
The study should have started 15 days ago, with a smaller group, but was postponed because it did not receive the necessary approvals.
– It is hoped that this study will clarify the additional benefit of a fourth dose and lead us to understand if it is worth giving a fourth dose and to whom – added the doctor to Lusa Agency.
Keeping an eye on the fifth wave
After the expert advisory committee advised the start of the campaign for the fourth dose in Israel, Prime Minister Naftali Benet promised to initiate the “plan immediately” to contain the fifth wave of the pandemic and the spread of the Ômicron variant.
The campaign was announced to start on Sunday but was delayed by the Ministry of Health, following a review of preliminary data suggesting that those infected with the Ômicron variant are between 50 and 70% less likely to need hospitalization than patients with the variant Delta.
The ministry’s director general, Nachman Ash, has not yet given the “green light” for the start of the fourth vaccination campaign. She still wants to look at studies and data available to date, such as those by the UK Health Security Agency, according to which the Ômicron variant produces less serious disease, although it spreads faster and is more vaccine-evasive.
Nachman Ash is expected to make a decision later this week, and does not rule out rejecting the expert advisory committee’s recommendation.
Covid-19 has caused more than 5.39 million deaths worldwide since the start of the pandemic, according to the latest report by Agence France-Presse.
The respiratory disease is caused by the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus, detected in late 2019 in Wuhan, a city in central China, and currently with variants identified in several countries.
A new variant, Ômicron, classified as worrisome by the World Health Organization (WHO), has been detected in southern Africa, but since the South African health authorities raised the alert on 24 November, infections have been reported in skin. at least 89 countries from all continents, including Portugal.
