“We've been seeing a constant growth in number of cases which I find very concerning, not necessarily because of the numbers themselves but because of the pattern,” said Prof. Cyrille Cohen, the head of the immunology lab at Bar-Ilan University.
“For example, if we look at the number of patients on ventilators, until a few days ago we had 16 or 17, last week there were 25-30 such patients, and now we are at 42,” he further said. “Overall, all the indicators points in one direction: more and more cases and severe cases.”
Cohen noted that he is not surprised by the phenomenon, since in his view no sufficient measures has been taken to contain the outbreak other than the rolling out of a third vaccine for the elderly, which has just began.
“People are returning from abroad and bringing back infections, it is the wedding season and I do not see that the green pass or the happy badge system are enforced everywhere,” he said referring to the outlines that reserve the access to gatherings and activities with over 100 participants to people who are fully immunized or have undergone a coronavirus test.
Prof. Nadav Davidovitch, director of Ben-Gurion University’s School of Public Health, is also not surprised by the numbers.
“In the past few weeks the R rate has been constantly between 1.3 and 1.4 so it is natural that we are seen an increase in cases,” he said, referring to the rate that measures the number of people that each virus carrier infects on average.
“We are very lucky because without the vaccine the R would be much higher, and also the number of serious patients, which has not been growing as much as general cases,” he remarked.
Davidovitch stressed that while the vaccine is not 100% effective, it has still proven a very high efficacy in protecting those immunized against severe symptoms.
“The most relevant issue to consider is the burden of the health care system,” he said, adding that the committee of experts advising the Health Ministry – where he is a member – has come up with a model to monitor hospitals’ occupancy rate to avoid that they reach a point where they cannot handle the number of patients.
When it comes to patients in serious conditions, the fourth wave in Israel – which started around mid-June – has not always been easy to deciphere.
The number has often been stable for days, sometimes even registering a slight decrease, before spiking fast again.
For instance, after several days standing at around 150 last week, within two days they surpassed 200 over the weekend, and then registered a slow increase again, bringing it to 212 on Monday.
“We have been following these numbers but we do not have an explanation yet for this trend,” Cohen said.
Since the new wave in the country has been caused by the highly contagious Delta variant, some experts have suggested to follow the vicissitudes of the UK, another nation with a high vaccination rate where the variant struck earlier than in Israel.
After a spike in cases, followed by a relatively contained increase in serious patients, the UK morbidity has been slowing down.
However both Cohen and Davidovitch expressed some skepticism that the comparison is relevant.
“They vaccinated many people using a different vaccine than Israel’s, with a different interval between the two doses, and they vaccinated later than in Israel,” Cohen said. “I’m happy that things are improving there, but I don’t know if this means something for us.”