Israel has one of the highest rates of COVID-19 vaccination in the world, with 78 percent of those aged 12 and up having been fully vaccinated, the vast majority with the Pfizer vaccine. Despite this, the country now has one of the highest infection rates in the world, with nearly 650 new cases per million people every day. More than half of the cases are in people who have been fully vaccinated, highlighting the Delta variant's extraordinary transmissibility and raising concerns that vaccination's benefits will wane over time. Because of the large number of Israelis who have been vaccinated, some outbreaks were unavoidable, and the unvaccinated are still far more likely to end up in the hospital or die. However, Israel's experience is bringing the booster issue to the attention of other countries, implying that even the best-vaccinated countries will face a Delta surge.

Ran Balicer, chief innovation officer at Clalit Health Services (CHS), Israel's largest health maintenance organization, says, "This is a very clear warning sign for the rest of the world" (HMO). “If it can happen here, it can probably happen anywhere,” says the narrator.

Israel is being closely watched now because it was one of the first countries out of the gate with vaccinations in December 2020 and quickly achieved a degree of population coverage that was the envy of other nations— for a time. The nation of 9.3 million also has a robust public health infrastructure and a population wholly enrolled in HMOs that track them closely, allowing it to produce high-quality, real-world data on how well vaccines are working...

This delta virus is really alarming because it does cause more infections and is more contagious than the previous variants and sometimes it leads to anxiety and stress. Are you aware of this one?