Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said on Sunday that Israel will offer a fourth dose of the COVID-19 vaccine to more than 60 people and medical staff as it faces a surge in infections of the Omicron type. Israel last week approved a fourth dose of a vaccine developed by Pfizer and BioNTech, a second booster for immune-compromised people and the elderly living in care homes.
“We now have a new layer of defense,” Bennett said in a televised news conference, adding that Israel’s top government medical official, whose approval is needed to expand the booster campaign, signed off on the latest move. had done. “Israel will once again be a leader in the global vaccination effort,” Bennett said.
Earlier, Nachman Aish, Director General of the Ministry of Health, said Israel could reach herd immunity as Omicron infections have increased and Merck & Co.’s Molnupiravir anti-viral pill was recommended for use in COVID-19 patients over the age of 18. was approved for. Herd immunity is the point at which a population is protected from a virus, either through vaccination or by people with antibodies developed by contracting the disease.
The highly transmissible Omicron variant has caused a wave of coronavirus cases, with infections reaching record highs around the world, with an average of more than a million cases detected every day between December 24 and December 30, data from Reuters found out from However, deaths have not risen to the same extent that the new version is expected to be less lethal, an idea Bennett described as a second booster largely in a bid to prevent severe disease in the elderly.
Daily cases in Israel are expected to reach record highs in the coming three weeks. Bennett said 50,000 people could soon be infected each day, while eligibility for testing could be tightened to help relieve long lines at testing stations.
“To reach herd immunity the (infection) number has to be very high. It is possible but we don’t want to reach that through infection, we want it to happen,” Aish told 103 FM radio earlier. As a result of vaccination of many people.” Salman Zarka, head of the Health Ministry’s Coronavirus Task Force, said that herd immunity was far from guaranteed, as the experience of the past two years has shown that some COVID-19 patients Those who were cured, later got infected again.
Israel’s health ministry says that about 60% of its 9.4 million population has been fully vaccinated, with almost all of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, meaning they have either received three doses or were recently He has received his second dose.
But thousands of people eligible for the third vaccination have not yet taken it. In the last 10 days, daily infections have more than quadrupled. Serious cases have also increased, but at a much lower rate, from about 80 to about 100.
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