Playing Hardball in Government and Politics

Israelis are frustrated by the fact that their nation has one of the highest COVID-19 vaccination rates (over 60 percent are fully vaccinated, and 25 percent have already had a booster), and yet is also leading the world in daily rate of new infections.

Israel has been logging over 10,000 new infections daily this week, with a positive test rate of around 7%. Many countries no longer consider Israel to be “green” on the COVID scale. By comparison, the United States has been registering about half the number of new daily infections per capita (around 900 per million citizens for Israel, just 450 per million for the US).

A new study suggests that Israel’s high vaccination rate could be at least partially to blame for the current spike in coronavirus infections.

The study was carried out last month by Israel’s Maccabi Healthcare Services (one of the local HMOs), and the results were featured in the leading scientific journals Science and Nature. (See: Why is Israel Still Giving COVID Boosters if the WHO Said to Stop?) But it only garnered serious attention here at home this week, when veteran Israeli journalist and Channel 13 News anchor Oshrat Kotler expressed her disapproval over the findings not being widely reported in Israel.

“How sad that I had to read about this important Israeli research on an American news site,” Kotler wrote on Facebook. The journalist added that she had contacted Maccabi and confirmed the veracity of the headline she had read, which asserted, based on the Maccabi study, that “vaccinated individuals are 13 times more likely to be infected by the Delta variant than those with natural antibodies.”

Indeed, the majority of the nearly 700 Israelis currently hospitalized due to COVID-19 are fully vaccinated against that virus, and vaccinated individuals make up a large percentage, if not a majority of those testing positive every day.  READ MORE