Vaccine Reduces Spread Risk Even Before 2nd Shot, Israeli Study Shows

By Nathan Jeffay, The Times of Israel February 14, 2021 < 1 minute

Dr. Sharon Alroy-Preis, head of public health services at the Israeli Health Ministry gets her second Pfizer/BioNtech vaccine dose, at Beilinson Hospital in Petah Tikva, January 2021. Photo: Israeli Health Ministry

This article was first published by The Times of Israel and is re-posted with permission.

Vaccinated people become far less of a COVID transmission risk even before receiving their second dose, a new “game-changing” Israeli study has concluded.

The first mass research of its kind on patients who test positive for the coronavirus and are confirmed to have been at least partially vaccinated, the study found that such patients have far smaller viral loads than those who haven’t received the vaccine.

A mobile vaccination unit set up by Israeli HMO Leumit in the southern Israeli town of Ofakim, January 2021. Photo: Leumit Health Services via GPO

“Our results show that infections occurring 12 days or longer following vaccination have significantly reduced viral loads,” wrote a multi-institution research team that crunched data from the Maccabi healthcare provider, stating they believe that could be important in “potentially affecting viral shedding and contagiousness as well as severity of the disease.”

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