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 Israel's Health Ministry said in April it was examining a small
number of such cases among people who received Pfizer/BioNtech's
PFE.N COVID-19 vaccine. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC)
made a similar statement earlier this month..
"We will release our final report which will say whether there
really is a link to the vaccine and what the implications are," said
Sharon Alroy-Preis, the ministry's head of public health.
Once the report is made public next week, she told Army Radio, "we
will issue the most responsible recommendation we can to Israelis,
and of course, ultimately, it will be up to parents" to decide
whether to vaccinate their children.
"I myself will vaccinate my 15-year-old son as soon as it is
authorised," Alroy-Preis said.
Dror Mevorach, one of the experts on the investigating panel, said
the inquiry includes comparisons of cases of myocarditis, an
inflammation of the heart muscle, among vaccinated patients with
those who have not been inoculated as well as data from previous
years, before the pandemic.
Mevorach, head of internal medicine at Jerusalem's Hadassah Ein
Kerem Hospital, said most of the 20 myocarditis cases it has treated
occurred among healthy males, with an average age of 22, one to four
days after they received their second inoculation.
Mevorach, who is also in charge of the hospital's COVID-19 units,
said nearly all patients diagnosed with heart inflammation had light
symptoms and made a full recovery.
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 The Health Ministry has not yet
said how many cases of myocarditis were detected
in total among the more than 5 million people
vaccinated in Israel. Israeli media reported the
number was about 100.
Over half Israel's population has been
vaccinated in a rapid rollout. The number of new
coronavirus cases, now averaging about 20 a day,
has been dropping steadily even as the economy
has opened and most restrictions have been
lifted or eased.
The fact that the pandemic is no longer raging
in Israel had changed the risk-benefit analysis
in weighing whether to begin vaccinating
youngsters, Mevorach said.
"At the moment, in the Israeli bubble, we are no
longer in an emergency situation so we can take
the time to probe deeply," he told Reuters in a
telephone interview.
(Additional reporting by Dan Williams; Writing
by Maayan Lubell; Editing by Jeffrey Heller and
Mark Heinrich)
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