Vaccination and infection trends in Israel, UAE, and Bahrain

In early 2021, vaccination campaigns in several Middle Eastern countries are ahead of the rest of the world.

Israel, United Arab Emirates and Bahrain Ranked first in the dose per 100 people At the beginning of the year.

Six months later, these three countries are still among the 10 most vaccinated countries-but the chart shows that their Covid infection trends are very different.

According to our data world, as of June 29, 57.8% of Bahrain’s population has been fully vaccinated, and 59.7% of Israeli residents have received two doses of Covid vaccine. The UAE’s personal data on full vaccination was last updated on April 20, when the figure was 38.8%.

With the deepening of the vaccination plan, the number of new daily cases in Israel has dropped sharply. Data show that the infection rate has basically remained at a double-digit low in the more than a month since the end of April. This was the case until the recovery in late June.

The number of cases is only a small part of the previous peak, but it has risen rapidly in recent days.

According to Nadav Davidovitch, president of the Israeli Association of Public Health Physicians, highly infectious delta mutations cause about half of new cases.

He told CNBC via video call, however, the simulation predicted that even if there is “widespread”, there will only be a few hundred serious cases. “It’s not like the third wave before,” he added, referring to the peak that started at the end of last year.

According to our data world, the United Arab Emirates ranks first in terms of total doses received per 100 people. But the number of new infections in the country has been hovering around 2,000 a day.

The number of cases has fallen from the record high reported in January, and temporarily dropped to a level of around 1,000 in May, but other than that, most of the time were near the same area.

Despite this, the current number of cases is still higher than the average daily number of cases reported in the fourth quarter of 2020 of approximately 1,200.

The UAE’s National Emergency Crisis and Disaster Management Authority announced in May that it will Provide the third dose of China’s national medicine vaccine. Since there are reports that people who have been vaccinated twice have been infected with the vaccine, the efficacy of the vaccine has been questioned.

The country said later People vaccinated by Sinopharm Group can receive Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine as a boosterReuters reported.

Although the country’s vaccination efforts are ongoing, the infection rate in Bahrain hit a record high in late May.

According to our data world, the kingdom reported 3,273 new cases on May 29.

At that time, more than 911,000 people in Bahrain had received at least one dose of Covid vaccine. It has a population of approximately 1.76 million.

Since then, the number of new cases per day has dropped to hundreds.

Bahrain also provided the third dose of Sinopharm’s vaccine. The booster injection of Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine is suitable for more vulnerable groups, such as those over 50 years old, Three months after they received the second dose of Sinopharm Group.

Infection is not the only indicator of a country’s coronavirus status, and vaccination is not the only factor that plays a role.

In addition to vaccination, a country’s demographics and Covid restrictions also play a role in the severity of the disease and the speed at which the virus spreads.

The death toll in Israel and the UAE has fallen and remained at a low level, while the number of deaths related to the new crown virus per million in Bahrain reached 17 in June.

Paul Tambia, president of the Asia-Pacific Society of Clinical Microbiology and Infection, said that the epidemic in the Middle East countries is not a cause for concern.

“I don’t think we should worry too much,” he told CNBC in an email. “It is reported that most or at least a large proportion of cases have occurred in people who have not been vaccinated.”

“The main concern is that if we don’t vaccinate a large part of the population, we seem to be unable to escape,” he said.

Medical experts say that high vaccination rates will not rule out the possibility of cluster cases in the future.

Tambia said: “I think that as long as the virus spreads globally and the borders remain open, the virus will occasionally break out even among vaccinated people.”

Davidovich said that “partial outbreaks” among unvaccinated children may continue.

He said it is “difficult to say” whether dependence on Chinese vaccines—as seen in the UAE and Bahrain—may be related to the dramatic increase in Covid cases.

Tambyah pointed out that Israel, which mainly uses Pfizer vaccines, has also seen cases come back.

He said that there are no scientific publications comparing traditional vaccines developed in China with vaccines that rely on messenger RNA technology, which instructs the body to produce harmless virus fragments that help trigger an immune response.

“Unfortunately, I think a higher vaccination rate is needed,” Tambia said.