With more than 30% of its population vaccinated, Israel leads the fight against Covid-19. However, the emergence of more infectious variants is overwhelming their hospitals, showing the long way to the rest of the world.
After inoculating 82% of Israelis aged 60 and over, entering almost for a whole month closing and closing the domestic airport this week, Israel indicates that the end of the tunnel may be further away. This prompts a rapid global recovery driven by the vaccine following Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s promise in Davos to turn Israel into a test case of how quickly Covid’s shots can help reopen economies.
A nurse administers a dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine inside a mass vaccination center in Tel Aviv on January 4th.
Photographer: Kobi Wolf / Bloomberg
“We are seeing a wave of infection refusing to decline, apparently due to the mutation,” Health Minister Yuli Edelstein said at a news conference on Thursday.
As the European Union struggles to get adequate supply of vaccines and US pressures to get more gunfire, Israeli situation is proof of the difficulty of fighting a virus the ability to mutate quickly keeps it one step ahead of efforts to contain it .
People who have gone through the vaccination cycle accounted for 2% or less of those hospitalized, said Sharon Alroy-Preis, head of public health, adding that “they were definitely more protected.” Still, not enough people have completed the inoculation cycle to draw conclusions about the vaccine’s effectiveness, Ran Balicer, head of the national team of Covid-19 experts, told Ynet television. .
The so-called British variant, 50% more infectious and possibly more virulent than the original virus, is to blame for the inability so far of the vaccination campaign and the blockade to curb the spread, Israeli health ministry officials said.
Although the vaccine is thought to work against the British variant, the more contagious nature of the mutation means higher infections and therefore more hospitalizations. The main goal of the health ministry now is to reduce the number of seriously ill people who are overwhelming hospitals and exhausting medical teams.
The infection rate in Israel has dropped to just over 9% from 10.2% earlier this month, and the severely or seriously ill people have stabilized at around 1,100. But the number of patients with respirators has reached a record, Crown commissioner Nachman Ash said. More than 4,600 people in Israel have died from the virus and more than 7,600 people are diagnosed daily.
Balicer said ten more days are likely to pass before the country sees critical cases slow, which will allow the economy to begin to return to normal.
Netanyahu has set a goal to inoculate all Israelis over the age of 16 by the end of March.
“The faster we vaccinate and the faster the population is going to be vaccinated, the faster we can control the spread,” said Hezi Levi, director of the Ministry of Health.
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