JERUSALEM – Last week, Israel was seen as a model country for the coronavirus, surpassing the rest of the world in the rate of vaccination of its citizens by a considerable margin.
But the virus had other ideas.
This week, Israel faces a strict blockade, as infections have increased to more than 8,000 new cases a day, officials fear that the most transmissible variant of the virus first identified in Britain is spreading rapidly and vaccine supplies of Israel are decreasing.
The prospect that Israel would have the virus under control in the spring, once promising, now seems uncertain. Health officials say that in the short term, at least, the vaccination campaign cannot compete with rising infection rates.
And the Palestinian Authority, which runs its own health care system in the occupied West Bank, has asked Israel for vaccines, sparking a debate about Israel’s responsibility to the Palestinians at a time when Israel’s vaccine supplies are dwindling.
“We are at the height of a global pandemic that is spreading at record speed with British mutation,” said Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a video statement on Tuesday, justifying the government’s decision to impose a complete national blockade that will close most schools and all non-essential workplaces for at least two weeks.
“Every hour we are late, the faster the virus spreads and it will take a heavy toll,” he added.
The blocking decision came after Prof. Eran Segal of the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel, presented the government with the dire projection that, without such action, Israel’s infection rate could rise to 46,000 new cases per day in February, an impressive number in a country with a population of about 9 million.
Government officials cited the variant discovery in Britain as one of the main reasons for imposing stricter restrictions. Netanyahu said the variant was “moving forward”, although not at the same pace as it spread across Britain.
At least 30 cases of the variant were identified in Israel by special sampling, spread across 14 different towns and cities, but officials and experts said that these tests were aimed at identifying the presence of the variant, not quantifying it, and the actual number of cases was likely much bigger.
Many scientists believe that the variant is more transmissible, meaning that it can spread more easily from one person to another.
Professor Segal said the variant may be a factor in increasing the rate of infection in Israel’s ultra-Orthodox Jewish community. In the past four weeks, infections among the ultra-Orthodox have increased sixteen times.
He estimated that the variant now accounts for about 20% of morbidity in ultra-Orthodox cities and neighborhoods.
There have been constant tensions between the ultra-Orthodox, who make up about 12.5 percent of the population, and traditional Israelis during the coronavirus crisis, particularly due to the insistence of some ultra-Orthodox rabbis to keep their educational institutions open against regulations during blockades. and generally disregarding restrictions at large meetings and social distance.
Casting another shadow over the tantalizing prospect of an early crisis emergency, Israel’s vaccine supplies were running low and officials said they may have to slow down their widely praised vaccination program in mid-January, unless they can persuade companies pharmaceutical companies to deliver more vaccines ahead of schedule.
A few days ago, the Israelis were celebrating the successful launch of their vaccination campaign, which overtook the rest of the world. About 1.5 million Israeli citizens, or more than 16 percent of the population, have received their first dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine since the inoculation program started on December 20.
The scarcity, officials say, may be a result of the program’s success: the first phase of the program was faster than most thought possible.
Israel did not disclose the number of vaccine doses it received, saying the agreements with pharmaceutical companies were confidential. The government has promised to reserve enough vaccines so that all those who received the first dose can receive the second dose as planned after about 21 days. This should include the majority of the high-risk population of Israeli health workers and citizens aged 60 and over.
Silent negotiations are being held with pharmaceutical companies to increase their deliveries, but shortages can cause delays in implementation. Netanyahu, whose political future may depend on the program’s success, said he was “continuing to work 24 hours a day to bring millions of vaccines to Israel”.
Netanyahu said on Wednesday that a small first shipment of Modern vaccines would arrive on Thursday and more would be soon. Pharmaceutical companies now see Israel as an interesting test case for vaccine effectiveness and potentially the first country to be fully vaccinated, officials and experts said, giving it an advantage in securing additional shipments.
Israel has faced criticism from human rights groups for failing to extend its vaccine program to most Palestinians living under Israeli control, even when Israelis living in West Bank settlements are being vaccinated.
Palestinian officials recorded hundreds of cases of Covid-19 a day in the occupied West Bank and the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip, the Palestinian coastal enclave cluster whose borders are tightly controlled by Israel and Egypt, and health officials believe the real numbers are many superior. Palestinians in these areas have not yet received vaccines.
On Wednesday, two Palestinian officials said the Palestinian Authority had asked Israel for up to 10,000 doses of the vaccine to immunize Palestinian frontline workers.
Hussein al-Sheikh, the top Palestinian official in charge of coordinating with the Israelis, said Israel had refused.
An Israeli official, speaking on condition of anonymity because she was not authorized to speak to the media, said Israel had secretly provided “dozens” of vaccines to the Palestinians this week, but has not yet responded to the larger request. Several Palestinian officials have denied receiving any vaccine from Israel.
The Oslo Accords, the interim peace agreements signed in the 1990s between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization, commit the two parties to cooperate in combating epidemics and to help each other in times of emergency.
The Geneva Conventions also oblige an occupying power to guarantee medical supplies for the local population and the necessary preventive measures to combat contagious diseases and epidemics.
Alan Baker, a former Israeli ambassador and expert in international law who participated in the drafting of the Oslo Accords, said he believed that this “would impose on Israel an obligation to help with the supply” of vaccines to combat Covid 19, but that it was “One two-way street ”.
Hamas, he said, holds Israeli hostages in Gaza and is forced by the same humanitarian standards to release them.
Israeli Health Minister Yuli Edelstein said last week that it was in Israel’s interest to contain the virus on the Palestinian side, but that Israel’s first obligation was to its own citizens. (Palestinian citizens of Israel and residents of East Jerusalem are receiving vaccines through the Israeli program.)
Dr Ali Abed Rabbo, a senior official at the authority’s Ministry of Health, said the Palestinians hope to receive two million doses of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine in February. They also expect the global Covax vaccine sharing system to deliver 60,000 doses in the first quarter of 2021 and almost two million more over the rest of the year.
United Nations officials have asked Israel to provide Palestinians with some vaccines to help protect their medical workers, said Gerald Rockenschaub, head of the World Health Organization mission to the Palestinians.
But Israel indicated to United Nations officials that it could not yet send vaccines to the Palestinians because it was dealing with a shortage of vaccines for its own citizens, said Rockenschaub.