By Salo
An outbreak of the Delta variant of COVID-19 in Israel has spread to some vaccinated people – with about half of the adults infected fully inoculated with the Pfizer shot, a health official said.
Ran Balicer, who heads a COVID-19 government advisory committee, said that about 90 percent of new infections in the country were likely caused by the Delta variant, a highly-contagious strain that first emerged in India, the Wall Street Journal reported.
“The entrance of the Delta variant has changed the transmission dynamics,” Balicer said.
Children under the age of 16 – the majority of whom had not received the vaccine – were responsible for about half of the new cases, Balicer said.
But about half of adults infected in the outbreak were considered fully-vaccinated – meaning that it had been at least two weeks since they received their final dose of the Pfizer shot, he said.
Balicer added that the so-called breakthrough cases were expected because though Pfizer is highly effective against the virus, it’s not 100 percent protective.
The spread of the Delta variant comes as daily cases rose to 200 on Thursday from around 10 a day for most of June, the Wall Street Journal reported.
Though the outbreak is small by global standards, it has prompted the government to reimpose indoor mask mandates, the newspaper reported.
Health officials in the US have warned that the Delta variant will soon become the dominate strain of COVID-19.
But evidence has shown that the vaccine will prevent severe cases of the bug, as well as hospitalizations.
In Israel, only five severe cases have been reported in the past 10 days, Balicer told the Journal.
