With more than 30% of its population vaccinated, Israel is leading the fight against Covid-19. However, the emergence of more infectious variants is overwhelming their hospitals, showing the long road ahead for the rest of the world.
After inoculating 82% of Israelis aged 60 and over, reaching almost month-long blocking and closing the national airport this week, Israel is indicating that the end of the tunnel may be further away. This reduces the hope of a rapid global recovery driven by the vaccine after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s promise in Davos to make Israel a test case for how quickly Covid vaccines 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 4.
Photographer: Kobi Wolf / Bloomberg
“We see a wave of infection that is refusing to subside, apparently because of the mutation,” Health Minister Yuli Edelstein said at a news conference on Thursday.
How the European Union struggling to get adequate supplies of vaccines and the US is pushing for more gunshots, the Israeli situation is evidence of the difficulty of fighting a virus whose rapidly mutating ability keeps it one step ahead of efforts to contain it.
People who have undergone the vaccination cycle make up 2% or less of those hospitalized, said the head of public health Sharon Alroy-Preis, adding that “they were definitely more protected”. Still, few people have completed the inoculation cycle to draw conclusions about the vaccine’s effectiveness, said Ran Balicer, head of Covid-19’s National Team of Experts, on 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 contain the spread, officials at the Israeli health ministry said.
Although the vaccine is believed to work against the British variant, the more contagious nature of the mutation means higher infections and therefore more hospitalizations. The health ministry’s main objective now is to reduce the number of critically ill patients who are overloading hospital wards and depleting medical staff.
The infection rate in Israel fell to just over 9% from 10.2% earlier this month, and people in serious or critically ill conditions have stabilized at around 1,100. But the number of patients with respirators has reached a record, said Corona commissioner Nachman Ash. More than 4,600 people died in Israel from the virus and more than 7,600 people are being diagnosed with the virus daily.
Balicer said it will probably take another 10 days before the country sees a decline in critical cases, allowing the economy to start returning to normal.
Netanyahu has set a goal to inoculate all Israelis over 16 by the end of March.
“The faster we vaccinate and the faster the population gets vaccinated, the faster we can control the spread,” said Hezi Levi, director of the Ministry of Health.
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