First indication of the effect of COVID-19 vaccinations on the course of the outbreak in Israel

  1. H. De-Leon
  2. R. Calderon-Margalit
  3. F. Pederiva
  4. Y. Ashkenazy
  5. D. Gazit

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Abstract

Concomitantly with rolling out its rapid COVID-19 vaccine program, Israel is experiencing its third, and so far largest, surge in morbidity. We aimed to estimate whether the high vaccine coverage among individuals aged over 60 years old creates an observable change in disease dynamics. Using observed and simulated data, we suggest that the shape of the outbreak as measured by daily new moderate and severe cases, and in particular of patients aged over 60, has changed because of vaccination, bringing the decline in new moderate and severe cases earlier than expected, by about a week. Our analyses is consistent with the assumption that vaccination lead to higher than 50% protection in preventing clinical disease and with at least some effectiveness in blocking transmission of elderly population, and supports the importance of prioritizing vulnerable population. This is the first indication of the effectivity of COVID-19 vaccine in changing the course of an ongoing pandemic outbreak.

One Sentence Summary

We show, by data analysis and modelling of the dynamics of COVID-19 pandemic in Israel, that the current nationwide outbreak, that had up to 0.1% of the population confirmed daily, is clearly affected by the vaccination program, that reached a coverage of more than 80% among people ≥ 60 years old.

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  1. ScreenIT

    SciScore for 10.1101/2021.02.02.21250630: (What is this?)

    Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.

    Table 1: Rigor

    Institutional Review Board Statementnot detected.
    Randomizationnot detected.
    Blindingnot detected.
    Power Analysisnot detected.
    Sex as a biological variablenot detected.

    Table 2: Resources

    No key resources detected.

    Results from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).

    Results from LimitationRecognizer: An explicit section about the limitations of the techniques employed in this study was not found. We encourage authors to address study limitations.

    Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.

    Results from Barzooka: We did not find any issues relating to the usage of bar graphs.

    Results from JetFighter: We did not find any issues relating to colormaps.

    Results from rtransparent:
    • Thank you for including a conflict of interest statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • Thank you for including a funding statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • No protocol registration statement was detected.

    About SciScore

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  2. Version published to 10.1101/2021.02.02.21250630v1 on medRxiv