Boosters helped Israel avoid exceeding hospital capacity as Covid-19 cases surged, data presented to FDA suggests

Boosters helped Israel avoid going beyond hospital capacity as Covid-19 cases surged, data suggests A model projects that without booster shots – or if boosters were administered a few weeks later– Covid-19 hospitalizations in Israel could have exceeded the nation's capacity, according to data that Dr. Sharon Elroy-Preiss, director of public health services at Israel's Ministry of Health, presented to the US Food and Drug Administration's Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee (VRBPAC) on Friday. By <a href="/profiles/melissa-mahtani">Melissa Mahtani</a>, Melissa Macaya, <a href="/profiles/veronica-rocha">Veronica Rocha</a> and <a href="/profiles/fernando-alfonso-iii">Fernando Alfonso III</a>, CNN CNN

A model projects that without booster shots – or if boosters were administered a few weeks later– Covid-19 hospitalizations in Israel could have exceeded the nation's capacity, according to data that Dr. Sharon Elroy-Preiss, director of public health services at Israel's Ministry of Health, presented to the US Food and Drug Administration's Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee (VRBPAC) on Friday.

"If we had not started booster doses at the end of July, we would have come to the capacity of Israel's hospitalization capabilities, and probably would have gone beyond it," Elroy-Preiss told VRBPAC members. The committee is meeting to discuss Pfizer/BioNTech's application for the administration of a booster dose of its Covid-19 vaccine in the United States. ...