Ziv Yaffe has tested positive for COVID-19 twice, after originally testing positive for the virus last August. However, with this new South African strain, Yaffe said that he does not experience any symptoms, stating that he “feels great and did not infect anyone else,” according to a report by Ynet. Yaffe, 57, tested positive for the new strain after returning to Israel from Turkey. He said that it was more difficult for him to deal with the virus when he had it last August. “I am neither a doctor nor a researcher, but I can say that personally, the first time I was indeed very ill,” he said in the report.A possible explanation for not having any symptoms this time may be due to “antibodies from the original virus that protected against the disease when infected with the strain,” according to Prof. Shai Efrati. Yaffe is currently participating in a study conducted by Efrati where he evaluates people’s immune system after recovering from coronavirus. “Since then we have been following him, and over time we have seen that with everyone, the antibodies go down – but we do not know if this is enough to prevent another disease. It should be emphasized that antibodies do not necessarily prevent infection,” Efrati added in the report.In his re-examination upon his return from Turkey, Yaffe was confirmed to have the South African strain. “He had the virus, but he wasn’t sick,” Efrati said. “His wife, daughters and grandchildren also lived with him – but none of them were infected.”
According to Efrati: “This is a case from which a lot can be learned. The antibodies he developed in August protected him from developing a disease,” he told Ynet. “This means that the antibodies that developed from the original virus he had provided protection against disease even when infected with the South African mutation.”As a result of increasing coronavirus cases, the Israeli government agreed to extend the current lockdown until Friday morning and the Knesset passed a bill which doubles the fine for violations of coronavirus regulations.
For the first time, an Israeli man who previously recovered from the coronavirus was found Sunday to be reinfected with the so-called South African strain, Hebrew media reported.
The diagnosis came amid continued uncertainty on the effectiveness of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine that Israel is using for its mass inoculation program against the new strains of the virus.
Ziv Yaffe, 57, from the central region of the country, recently returned from Turkey. Speaking to Channel 12 news, he said that whereas during his first infection in August he had “all the symptoms,” the second time around he felt fine.
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Yaffe returned to Israel on January 16. By January 23, he had a bit of a runny nose and decided to get a virus test, as he was participating in follow-up research at the Assaf Harofeh Medical Center. The test showed that he was reinfected and further testing revealed that he had caught the South African mutation.
Shai Efrati, head of research and development at the medical center, told the station that Yaffe’s case was unique because doctors had a complete medical record of his bouts with the virus.
“It is the first time that we have a full record, of infection, recovery, reinfection, and that the antibodies that he had protected him from the mutation,” Efrati said.
“What we learn is that when there are antibodies, they protect against illness,” he said.
Screen capture from video of Ziv Yaffe, left, who was reinfected with the coronavirus, and Shai Efrati of the Assaf Harofeh Medical Center. (Channel 12 news)
Efrati cautioned that it was too early to conclude that anyone who has had the disease is also protected against other mutations, saying it would require more similar cases before such conclusions could be drawn.
But, he added, Yaffe’s case is “very encouraging.”
Yaffe said that in addition to not feeling unwell, family members and others had been in close contact with him during the period of his second infection, yet none caught the virus from him.
His case is the second time the South African variant has been brought into Israel from Turkey, according to the Ynet website.
Health officials are concerned that the South African mutation, similar to the British and Californian strains which are considered more infectious, could lead to another wave of the virus among those who have recovered from previous infection and are not being vaccinated as part of the immunization drive.
All previous patients with the South African mutation, first discovered in South Africa in December, were people who came back to the country from South Africa, Ethiopia, or Dubai, according to the report.
Sharon Alroy-Preis, the acting head of the ministry’s public health division, speaks virtually to the Knesset’s Constitution, Law, and Justice Committee on January 6, 2021. (Screen capture: YouTube)
On Saturday, Dr. Sharon Alroy-Preis, the head of public health services at the Health Ministry, told the Kan public broadcaster there were preliminary indications the coronavirus vaccines may prove less effective in shielding against the South African variant.
“We don’t have evidence yet that any of the variants are completely resistant to the vaccine, but there is some preliminary evidence to say that perhaps the effectiveness of the vaccine is somewhat less against the South African variant,” Alroy-Preis said.
She said testing was still in progress to clarify the matter.
Pfizer and BioNTech, whose vaccine is being used in Israel’s world-leading vaccine drive, said Thursday that early tests suggest their immunization would be protective against the variants from South Africa and Britain.
Their study found that the antibodies were able to neutralize all the sets of mutations tested. It noted that the effect was “slightly lower” against three mutations in the variant found in South Africa, including E484K. But the firms said that it was “unlikely to lead to a significant reduction in the effectiveness of the vaccine.”
The Health Ministry last week confirmed that three more cases of the South African coronavirus variant have been found in Israel, bringing the total number of infections from the strain to 30. Three of the cases were discovered in a random sampling, raising concerns of undetected community spread.
Meanwhile, the British variant is spreading wildly in Israel, with health officials blaming the continued high coronavirus caseload after weeks of lockdown on the UK mutation. The daily infections continue to remain in the thousands, despite Israel’s strict restrictions and vaccination campaign.
A man receives a COVID-19 vaccine injection at a vaccination center in Jerusalem, on January 28, 2021. (Olivier Fitoussi/Flash90)
Over 3 million Israelis — almost one-third of its population — have received the first dose of the vaccine, and 1.7 million have received both shots. The shots are being administered according to a plan that began with medical workers, those over the age of 60 and at-risk groups, with the age limit dropping steadily as more citizens complete the two-shot vaccination cycle.
In an effort to keep the virus variants out of the country, Israel has closed its main international airport, including to its own citizens. The order is set to expire Sunday, but will likely be extended.
The government on Sunday is expected to extend the nationwide lockdown by another week to drive down infection rates.
Since the start of the virus outbreak early last year 641,373 people in Israel have been diagnosed with the virus, according to Health Ministry figures released Sunday. The death toll stood at 4,768.
Agencies contributed to this report.
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New Delhi police said a “very low intensity improvised device” went off around 5 p.m. local (6.30 a.m. ET) in the center of the city. No injuries were reported.
Israel is currently treating the explosion as a terror event, an official at the country’s foreign ministry told CNN. The official said it is too early to say for sure whether the embassy was the target but “this is one of the investigation directions at this stage.”
An Israeli foreign ministry spokesperson said earlier there were no casualties in the blast and there had been no damage to the building.
Delhi police said the windows of three vehicles were the only things to be damaged in the blast, adding that on “initial impressions” the explosion was a “mischievous attempt to create a sensation.”
India’s minister of external affairs, S. Jaishankar, said he had spoken to Israeli foreign minister Gabi Ashkenazi and assured him the blast was being taken very seriously.
“Assured him of the fullest protection for the Embassy and Israeli diplomats. Matter is under investigation and no effort will be spared to find the culprits,” Jaishankar said in a tweet.
Friday marks the 29th anniversary of the establishment of full diplomatic relations between Israel and India.
Five Israeli police officers were wounded Sunday in clashes with ultra-Orthodox demonstrators protesting coronavirus restrictions in cities across the country.
Police reported the five officer injuries and at least four arrests as large crowds of ultra-Orthodox protesters confronted officers in multiple cities in Israel, The Associated Press reported.
Israeli law enforcement has been mostly hesitant to crack down on people in the ultra-Orthodox community for noncompliance with COVID-19 requirements, including by reopening schools, praying in synagogues and holding large weddings and funerals.
But on Sunday, officers were faced with the crowds of demonstrators speaking out against the restrictions.
In Bnei Brak, young men challenged police and threatened journalists, leading an officer to fire his pistol into the air to deter the crowd, according to the AP. Two days earlier, ultra-Orthodox demonstrators had attacked a police vehicle in the city.
Law enforcement used tear gas and putrid-smelling water to break up hundreds of ultra-Orthodox protesters who were outside of a reopened school and calling police “Nazis.” Dozens of demonstrators also faced off with police in Ashdod outside of an ultra-Orthodox school.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin NetanyahuBenjamin (Bibi) NetanyahuMORE condemned disobedience of the coronavirus restrictions, saying a small minority of people were behaving in an “unacceptable” way.
“I expect all citizens of Israel to respect the safety guidelines,” he said, according to the AP. “That includes all the sectors, including the ultra-Orthodox.”
Israel has one of the highest rates of infection of any country in the world, with an average of more than 8,000 cases being confirmed per day. Health experts have attributed the recent spread of the virus to the lack of compliance among the ultra-Orthodox community.
Israel has recorded almost 600,000 COVID-19 cases and nearly 4,400 fatalities, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.
COVID-19 has disproportionately affected the ultra-Orthodox community, which makes up more than one-third of Israel’s cases while being slightly more than 10 percent of the population.
The uptick in cases could endanger the success of Israel’s vaccination effort after the country has vaccinated more than a quarter of its 9.2 million population, according to the AP.
The protests also come as Netanyahu announced that the nation will shut down its international airport to almost all flights beginning on Tuesday until Jan. 31. Exceptions will be made for a small amount of humanitarian cases and cargo flights.
Israel’s mass vaccination campaign running in parallel with an active coronavirus outbreak may lead to “evolutionary pressure” on the virus, resulting in an Israeli variant that could be resistant to or have certain advantages over the vaccine.
So contended the Coronavirus National Information and Knowledge Center Saturday night in one paragraph of a nine-page report on mutations.
The result was a frenzy of headlines and panic.
Already, the world learned over the weekend that the British variant, which has spread like wildfire across Israel, could be more deadly than originally thought.
Moreover, the government and health officials have raised fears that variants that enter Israel through Ben-Gurion Airport could go against the country’s vaccination program and hurt its ability to surface from the crisis. This includes the South African variant, which was brought to Israel via South Africa and Dubai, and in a preliminary study has been shown to make some vaccines less effective.
However, to date, “there is no known meaningful Israeli mutation,” Head of Public Health Services Prof. Sharon Alroy-Preis told KAN News Sunday morning.
But she added that “wherever there is a virus, mutations can develop.”
“Viruses constantly acquire variants,” said Prof. Ephrat Levy-Lahad, director of the Medical Genetics Institute at Shaare Zedek Medical Center. She told The Jerusalem Post that these variants occur when a genome changes in some way during replication.
“Think about if you had to make handwritten copies of the genome – there is a very great likelihood of having a typographical error,” Prof. Jonathan Gershoni of the Shmunis School of Biomedicine and Cancer Research at Tel Aviv University explained. “So, whereas in printing books or copying documents, typos are common and understandable, the same is true when replicating a genome. But we call those typos mutations, and the virus bearing those mutations is a mutant or variant.”
LEVY-LAHAD said that most of the changes are “silent” and have no effect on the virus proteins or anything else. But sometimes these “typos” can have a profound effect, Gershoni said. For example, “My wife is tough” vs “My life is tough” – the two phrases have one letter different but vastly different meanings.
Mutations could increase the ability of a virus to become more infectious, could render the virus more pathogenic or make it less susceptible to neutralizing antibodies stimulated or induced through vaccination, Gershoni said. On the other hand, he said that some mutations could make the virus less efficient and ultimately cause it to peter out.
Immunization could theoretically hasten the evolution of a virus, said Levy-Lahad.
“Until coronavirus, one of the major health issues was that many germs had become resistant to antibiotics because a lot had been given in the population, often unnecessarily, and germs found a way to become resistant to those antibiotics. Those germs that manage to achieve resistance become more predominant because they will prevail,” she explained.
“If someone who is immunized can still get some level of infection, then by chance there are going to be variants that can resist the antibodies you have thanks to the vaccination.”
She said that, “Basically, it is a numbers game. If you have a lot of sick people and a lot of people immunized – and if the immunization does not completely rule out infection – then simply because you have a lot of people than can transmit coronavirus and a lot of hosts in which it can evolve, the variant could be created.”
But she said that does not mean that this will happen.
THE KNOWLEDGE Center report warned that this hypothetical “Israeli mutation” could give the virus certain potential to evade the immune response elicited by vaccination. It might therefore spread faster within the population – especially in light of the fact that children are not getting the jab.
But Levy-Lahad said the situation is not so black-and-white – that this is not an “all-or-nothing phenomenon.”
“It could be, for example, that immunization does not completely eradicate infection, but it lowers the rate of severe disease from 2% [one in 50] to one in 1,000 – that is still going to have a huge impact,” she said.
She added that the influenza vaccine is an example of a vaccine that has to be updated because the virus mutates.
“I don’t know that anyone has shown this to be a result of the vaccination rate,” Levy-Lahad said.
However, she said that fear of mutations is an argument for following Health Ministry regulations and lowering infection.
Moreover, as Gershoni emphasized, whereas Israel has no control over how random mutations occur, the country does have control over how to reduce infectious rates.
“With regards to the uniqueness or not of Israel, one has to remember that of the countries with the highest number of vaccinees, we are fifth. The United States is leading with 21 million people vaccinated, an infectious rate of 77,000 people per million, and well over 150,000 total infections per day,” Gershoni said.
“The number of infections in Israel due to the lockdown is gradually dropping – and hopefully will continue to do so,” he said. “It is our responsibility to do what we can to prevent escape mutations while we increase the vaccination campaign to ensure the safety of our population.”
With replication, there is a direct relationship between how many copies are being made at a given time to the mutations that are going to be accumulated, Gershoni said. If the infection rate is low, then the number of mutations tends to be relatively small. Anytime the infection rate is enhanced, so will there be an increase in errors.
“What I really worry about when people come out with these announcements, like there is going to be an Israeli mutation, is that they play into the hands of those people who say there is no use in getting vaccinated or that it is really not necessary,” Levy-Lahad stressed.
“Vaccination is the best thing we have right now.”
