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One Elderly Patient Vaccinated Spreads an Outbreak in a Hospital in Israel
The Third dose of Vaccine and robust prevention could be the solution to decrease the tendency of new COVID-19 cases.
Prevention will never cease to be the most powerful weapon to prevent disease. Clinics, diagnostic centers, and hospitals are always obliged to follow the protocols strictly. Masks and vaccines against the coronavirus were not enough to avoid a major outbreak that happened lately in a hospital in Israel. So says a study published on September 30 in Eurosurveillance, the European journal on surveillance, epidemiology, prevention, and control of infectious diseases.
What happened at Meir Medical Center was paradigmatic: An elderly patient on dialysis, who was not tested for Covid upon admission but later tested positive, infected 41 other people, including patients and hospital staff (wearing the mask) and family members. Up to 39 of those infected (96%) were fully vaccinated, all for more than five months.
The above is not to say that vaccines don’t work because, as the analysis explains, it was elderly, hospitalized, and previously ill patients who suffered the most. At the same time, younger doctors and nurses remained largely asymptomatic.
