Can an Israeli mutation cancel an Israeli mass vaccination campaign?

So, on Saturday night, in one paragraph of a nine-page report on mutations, he fought with the National Center for Information and Knowledge of Coronavirus.

The result was a frenzy of headlines and panic.

Already, the world has learned that wildfire-like British variants throughout Israel over the weekend can be more deadly than originally thought.

But to date, “no meaningful Israeli mutations are known,” public health services professor Sharon Alroy Price told KAN News on Sunday morning.

But she added, “mutations can occur wherever the virus is present.”

“Consider whether you need to make a handwritten copy of the genome. Typographical errors are very likely to occur,” explained Professor Jonathan Gershoni of the School of Biomedicine and Cancer Research at Tel Aviv University. “Therefore, typos are common and easy to understand in book printing and document copying, but the same is true when replicating the genome. But we mutate those typos. The virus that calls and has those mutations is a mutant or variant. “

LEVY-LAHAD said that most changes are “silent” and have no effect on viral proteins or anything else. But sometimes these “typos” can have serious consequences, Gershoni said. For example, “My wife is tough” and “My life is tough” – The two phrases differ by one letter but have very different meanings.

Mutations can increase the infectivity of the virus, increase the pathogenicity of the virus, and make it less susceptible to the neutralizing antibodies stimulated or induced by vaccination, Gershoni said. On the other hand, he said, some mutations can reduce the efficiency of the virus and ultimately weaken it.

According to Levy-Lahad, vaccination could theoretically accelerate the evolution of the virus.

“Up to the coronavirus, one of the major health problems was that many bacteria became resistant to antibiotics, because in many cases unnecessarily many bacteria were given to the population. , Because the bacteria have found a way to become resistant to those antibiotics. Those bacteria that have been able to achieve resistance will be more predominant because they will be predominant, “she explained. ..

“If a vaccinated person is still likely to get some infection, vaccination will happen to have a mutant that can resist the antibodies you have.”

She said. “Basically, it’s a game of numbers. If there are a lot of people who are sick or vaccinated and vaccinations don’t completely eliminate the infection, there are a lot of people who can get the coronavirus. There are many hosts that can be infected with the coronavirus. Variants can be created. “

But that doesn’t mean this will happen, she said.

A report from the Knowledge Center warned that this fictitious “Israeli mutation” could give the virus certain possibilities to evade the immune response evoked by vaccination. Therefore, it can spread faster within the population, especially in light of the fact that children do not get jabs.

However, Levy-Lahad said the situation was not so black and white and this was not an “all or nothing phenomenon”.

“For example, vaccination does not completely eradicate the infection, but it can reduce the incidence of severe illness from 2%. [one in 50] To 1 in 1,000-it will still have a big impact, “she said.

She added that the flu vaccine is an example of a vaccine that must be renewed in order for the virus to mutate.

“I don’t know that everyone shows that this is the result of vaccination rates,” Levy-Lahad said.

However, she said the fear of mutation is a debate to reduce infections in accordance with health ministry regulations.

Moreover, as Gershoni emphasized, Israel has no control over how random mutations occur, but the country has control over how it reduces infection rates.

“It’s important to remember that Israel is the fifth most vaccinated country in terms of uniqueness. In the United States, 21 million people are vaccinated and the infection rate is per million. With 77,000 people, the total number of infections per day is well over 150,000, “Gershoni said.

“The number of Israeli infections from the blockade is declining-and hopefully it will continue to do so,” he said. “It is our responsibility to do what we can to prevent escape mutations while increasing vaccination campaigns to ensure the safety of the population.”

According to Gershoni, replication has a direct relationship between the number of copies made at a particular time and the mutations that accumulate. When the infection rate is low, the number of mutations tends to be relatively low. Whenever the infection rate goes up, there will be more errors.

“What I’m really worried about when people publish these announcements, as Israeli mutations occur, is the hands of those who say that vaccination doesn’t make sense or isn’t really necessary. “It means going to Israel,” emphasized Levy Rahad.

“Vaccination is the best we have right now.”