Booster shots offer 4 times more protection than two doses

Israel’s Health Ministry said a third dose of mRNA COVID-19 vaccine (booster shot) increased the protection against COVID-19 infection by four times than two doses.

According to Reuters on Monday, Israel’s Health Ministry said that among people aged 60 and over 10 days after they received a third dose, a third dose of the COVID-19 vaccine offered four times higher protection than two doses. When it comes to serious illness and hospitalization, a third dose provided five to six times higher protection. The full details of the study were not revealed. The findings are in line with the recent announcement by Israel’s Maccabi Healthcare Services that 37 of 149,144 people aged 60 and over, who received a booster shot, were infected with COVID-19, which is one-sixth of the infection rate compared to after two doses.

For the first time in the word, Israel began giving a booster shot to people with weakened immune systems on July 12 and started booster shots for over 60s on July 30. It is recently administering a booster shot to people over 40s, pregnant women, and teachers. About 1.5 million Israelis out of the total population of 9.3 million have gotten a third dose of the mRNA COVID-19 vaccine. Due to the spread of the highly infectious Delta variant, Israel is seeing an average of 7,200 new daily COVID-19 cases as of Saturday, a level similar to that in January when the pandemic was severe.

Israel’s Health Ministry stressed that it is senior citizens who need a booster shot the most, saying people, who developed more serious illness with COVID-19 after their vaccination, were mostly people over 60 or those who had underlying conditions.


Jong-Yeob JO jjj@donga.com