Israel Is a World Leader in Vaccine Rates — And Now in Infection Rates Too

Israel continues to lead the world by a wide berth with its aggressive vaccination rate, but the country has surpassed the U.S. and most of the world with the rate of daily new infections.

The country is in its second week of lockdown but beginning on Friday, a much harsher lockdown will be imposed to include the shuttering of schools.

Despite the lockdown, 8,996 new cases were confirmed on Wednesday, Israel’s Health Ministry reported, just shy of its all-time record in September of 9,020.

At least 30 cases have been identified by the ministry as the British mutation of the virus. According to coronavirus czar Nachman Ash, those 30 individuals infected 189 people – a ratio of 1:6, compared with the original coronavirus contagion ratio which is around 1:1.27 in Israel.

Israel’s population stands at 9.29 million. Of those, some 1.5 million people — which translates to nearly 16 percent of the population— has received the vaccine, making it the world leader by a large margin, as Breitbart Jerusalem reported.

The U.S. has only vaccinated 1.46 percent of its population and the world average is markedly lower than that, at 0.19 percent.

Studies of the Pfizer vaccine have demonstrated that immunity begins occurring only 8-10 days after the first dose and even then immunity is only at around 50 percent. For that reason, a second dose is given 21 days after the first.

It is also unclear whether the vaccine prevents a person from spreading the virus.

While the individual would not get sick, since the immune system is now equipped to fight the virus, the individual’s nasal passages could still emit infectious virus particles.