15.6% rise in Pulmonary Embolism (PE) rate in Israel 2021-2022
15.6% rise in Pulmonary Embolism (PE) rate in Israel 2021-2022
2021-2022 average compared to 2018-2020 baseline
Hebrew version גירסה בעברית
Population size: N = 7,310,226 (2022)
* The Y-axis does not start at 0, in order to emphasize the baseline trend and change in rate.
Data sources:
1. Number of cases: FOIA responses from Israel’s two largest health funds (Clalit and Maccabi).
2. No. of members in each year and each health fund: Israel National Insurance (Bituach Leumi).
Discussion:
The graph is mostly influenced by the 50-80y age group due to higher rates of PE in the elderly group, but younger age groups also exhibit a rise in PE rates.
There are several factors which could explain the rise in PE rate:
Acute Covid19 which requires hospitalization is considered a possible cause for PE, yet there is no significant rise in PE rate in 2020 despite the early Covid-19 variants, which were associated with more severe disease.
The rise in PE could be explained by a rise in advanced and metastatic cancer. There are preliminary signs for a rise in those cancer cases in Israel but these are not yet backed by official data for us to publish.
mRNA vaccines are associated with an increased risk of pulmonary embolism. (1) (2)
Further investigation is urgently required to test for a causal relationship between the vaccines and the significant rise in PE rate.