With more than 30% of its population vaccinated, Israel is leading the fight against Covid-19. Yet the emergence of more infectious variants is overwhelming in its hospitals, showing the long road ahead for the rest of the world.
After 82% of Israelis were vaccinated elderly 60 and up, go in an almost month long If the national airport is closed this week, Israel indicates that the end of the tunnel could be further. The dives are hoping for a rapid, global vaccine-driven recovery after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu promised in Davos to make Israel a test case for how quickly Covid shots could help reopen economies.
A nurse gives a dose of Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine at a massage center in Tel Aviv on January 4.
Photographer: Kobi Wolf / Bloomberg
“We are seeing a wave of infection refusing to take off, apparently due to the mutation,” Health Minister Yuli Edelstein told a news conference on Thursday.
If the European Union fighting to get enough stock of vaccines and pushing the US to get more shots in the arms, the Israeli situation is a testament to the difficulty of fighting a virus, giving the ability to quickly mutate it a step ahead of the efforts to limit it.
People who went through the vaccination cycle were 2% or less of those admitted to the hospital, said public health chief Sharon Alroy-Preis, saying “they are definitely more protected.” However, not enough people have completed the vaccination cycle to draw conclusions about the effectiveness of the vaccine, Ran Balicer, head of the Covid-19 National Experts Team, told Ynet television.
The so-called British variant, 50% more contagious and possibly more virulent than the original virus, is to blame for the inability so far of the vaccination campaign and the exclusion to curb the spread, the Israeli health ministry said.
Although the vaccine presumably works against the British variant, the more contagious nature of the mutation means higher infections and therefore more hospitalizations. The main goal of the Ministry of Health now is to reduce the numbers of seriously ill people, who are overwhelming hospital wards and exhausting medical teams.
The infection rate in Israel has dropped to just over 9% from 10.2% earlier this month, and people who are seriously or critically ill have stabilized at around 1100. But the number of patients on respirators has reached a record, said Corona Commissioner Nachman Ash. More than 4,600 people in Israel have died from the virus and more than 7,600 people are diagnosed with it daily.
Balicer said it would probably take another ten days for the country to decline critical cases, causing the economy to return to normal.
Netanyahu has set himself the goal of vaccinating all Israelis over 16 by the end of March.
“The faster we are vaccinated and the faster the population is going to be vaccinated, the faster we can bring the spread under control,” said Hezi Levi, director of the Ministry of Health.
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