The hidden heart signal in Israel’s teen Covid-19 vaccine push

A cluster of cardiac reports in 12–16-year-olds was recorded during Israel’s 2021 vaccination campaign — but it was not publicly disclosed or addressed at the time.

In January 2021, Israel secured early access to the Pfizer mRNA Covid-19 vaccine and launched a national campaign that moved faster than anywhere else in the world.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told the World Economic Forum that Israel would act as “a world laboratory” — trading anonymised national health data for early vaccine supply.

The premise was clear: Israel would generate real-world evidence in real time.

That promise carried responsibility. If Israel was the global test case, its safety monitoring systems needed to function — and to be transparent.

Newly published research suggests that during the 2021 rollout to adolescents, cardiovascular reports were accumulating within a surveillance dataset but were not publicly analysed or discussed during the critical decision window.

That underlying data were only released following Freedom of Information requests.