Covid-19 vaccines appear to be cutting transmission of virus in Israel

Covid-19 vaccines appear to be limiting both the number of new infections of the novel coronavirus and the number of hospitalisations in Israel.

According to the BBC, which cited figures from the country's Ministry of Health, out of the 750,000 people aged 60 and over who had been fully vaccinated, only 531, or 0.07%, had tested positive for Covid-19.

And of those only 38 were hospitalised, reportedly with moderate, severe or critical disease.

The data used by the MoH covered 1.0m Israelis, of whom 743,845 were over 60.

All had received the second dose of the vaccine at least seven days before.

Three deaths were nevertheless recorded, although the BBC said it was possible that they were infected before being able to acquire full immunity.

Significantly as well, 7,000 infections were recorded before the vaccine had time to take effect.

Of those patients, 700 developed a moderate to critical illness and 307 died.

Nonetheless, the data suggested a drop in both infections and illness starting 14 days after the first shot of the vaccine was administered.