Eran Segal, a scientist at Israel’s Weizmann Institute of Science, has advised mass vaccination against covid-19, saying that the vaccines are effective, even given the various variants of the virus.
“What we have seen so far is that the vaccines are highly effective,” we don’t know until when, said the professor and one of the best-known names in fighting the pandemic in Israel, one of the countries that have managed most successfully to control the covid-19 disease caused by the new coronavirus.
With more than half of the population vaccinated with the two doses, Israel has also invested in a large information campaign and data collection and analysis, a topic that Segal explained at the conference, afterwards stating that the vaccination has been effective taking into account the main variants of the virus.
Eran Segal also explained that for the success of the fight against covid-19 the information and communication system was important, which allowed building models about the evolution of the pandemic, starting with a simple and “online” survey that people could answer and send in minutes reporting the symptoms of the possible infection.
The system allowed for example, he said, to predict when the health services would reach their limits, or allowed, when the prevalence of the so-called English variant of the virus (more contagious) was realized, to advise the government to decree an immediate lockdown.
With the information system in place, the Institute analyzed the effectiveness of the vaccines, the first sign of which was the decline in contagions, hospitalizations, and serious cases
“I think these models can be very useful,” he said, explaining that in this way one can predict the evolution of critical cases of the disease, even how long patients will need ventilation.
With the information system in place, the Institute has analyzed the effectiveness of the vaccines, whose first sign was the decline in contagions, hospitalizations, and severe cases.
Eran Segal explained that during the month of confinement (at the beginning of the year) but also of vaccination, there was a decrease in hospitalizations of older people. “The hospitalizations started to be mainly younger people, because the older people were more protected” by having been prioritized in the vaccination, he said.
With an official number of new cases of covid-19 being residual, the scientist accentuated that fact at the conference: “today the economy is open and the number of cases is going down.”
