A pregnant woman who died overnight on Saturday in COVID-19 was not vaccinated against the disease because she feared she could put her unborn baby at risk.
Speaking to the media, Osnat Ben Shitrit’s mother and sisters asked people to get the vaccines, while his brother-in-law, who admitted to being behind an anti-vaccination social media group, was cautious about immunization.
Ronit Sianni said his daughter wanted to be vaccinated, but was concerned about safety for pregnant women. Health officials in recent weeks have urged pregnant women to get vaccinated for fear that they are at greater risk of new strains of the virus than with the original virus.
Get the daily edition of The Times of Israel by email and never miss our top news.
“Go get vaccinated, don’t wait,” Sianni told Canal 13. “It’s not a game. It is a matter of life and death. ”
Ben Shitrit, 32, a mother of four, died at Hadassah Hospital Ein Kerem in Jerusalem. Doctors were unable to save her 30-week fetus in an emergency cesarean section. The fetus had not been infected with the virus, but was born in a critical condition and did not survive, Hadassah said.
Osnat Ben Shitrit. (Instagram)
Ben Shitrit’s brother-in-law told public broadcaster Kan that he has set up an anti-vaccination group on Facebook that has reached thousands of members and is still a member of several other groups.
Screen capture of the video of Osnat’s brother-in-law Ben Shitrit speaking to the media. (Twitter)
The man, who was not identified in the report, said that after Ben Shitrit’s death he suspended the group, but remains in the rest.
“When you arrive at your yard, you understand the need to think differently. Now we understand the cost of coronavirus, ”he said, but he remained cautious when advising on vaccination.
The national vaccination campaign is “coercive,” he said, apparently referring to government plans to restrict participation in some aspects of public life for those who have not been vaccinated or have not recovered from the disease.
“I’m not saying to run and get vaccinated because you need to, but simply, if you want to prevent death in your home, you have the ability, you have the option of being vaccinated,” said the man.
He advised people to do other tests first to determine if they already had antibodies that could have been produced during asymptomatic infection with the virus.
Ben Shitrit’s two sisters told the station that the future mother had been in serious condition for a few days, but refused to be hospitalized.
The sisters said that when Ben Shitrit arrived at the hospital, she was already in critical condition. Echoing the mother, they call on the public to be vaccinated.
Ben Shitrit was healthy until he recently contracted the coronavirus and previously had four mild pregnancies that ended in simple births, a Hadassah Medical Center spokeswoman told The Times of Israel.
A resident of the Jerusalem area, Ben Shitrit was admitted to the hospital last Tuesday due to breathing problems and started to get worse quickly on Saturday night. Doctors noticed damage to several of his organs, and a large team, including specialists in cardiology and gynecology, was set up beside his bed.
According to a statement by Hadassah, doctors made “very prolonged” resuscitation attempts and performed an emergency cesarean section. But the mother died and “despite enormous efforts to save the fetus’ life in the intensive care unit for preterm infants”, he did not survive.
Ben Shitrit was buried on Sunday afternoon in Jerusalem.
News of his death reverberated throughout the Israeli health system, with doctors warning that this illustrates the increased danger that the so-called British variant, which now accounts for almost all Israeli COVID cases, poses to pregnant women and fetuses.
Although concern about the British strain has recently focused on its transmissibility, not virulence, it is believed to have a worse impact on pregnant women than the regular strain. Last month, as the British variant spread, Israel approved vaccines for pregnant women and began encouraging women to get the vaccines.
There are currently 50 pregnant women or new mothers in hospitals across the country, of which 19 are in serious condition and eight are considered critical, according to Hebrew media reports.
The Ministry of Health has created a special task force that works full-time in search of false viral news that could damage Israel’s coronavirus vaccination campaign.
Some Israeli anti-vaxxer groups on Facebook were overthrown, allegedly after requests from the Ministry of Health.
As of Sunday, more than 4.3 million citizens have received at least the first dose of the Pfizer / BioNTech vaccine that Israel is using in its mass immunization campaign, representing almost half the population. More than 2.9 million also had the second, according to data from the Ministry of Health.
