With more than 30% of the population vaccinated, Israel is leading the fight against Covid-19. Still, the emergence of more contagious variants is overwhelming hospitals, showing the long way for the rest of the world.
After inoculating 82% of Israelis deprecated 60 and more, almost month long Locking up and closing the national airport this week, Israel indicates that the end of the tunnel may be further away. That hopes for a rapid vaccine-fueled global recovery following Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s promise in Davos to make Israel a test case for how quickly Covid injections can help reopen economies.
A nurse will administer a dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine at a large-scale vaccination center in Tel Aviv on Jan. 4.
Photographer: Kobi Wolf / Bloomberg
“We are seeing a wave of infection refusing to subside, apparently because of the mutation,” Health Minister Yuli Edelstein said at a news conference on Thursday.
Like the European Union is fighting to get enough vaccines and the US is pushing for more weapons. The Israeli situation proves that it is difficult to fight a virus, whose ability to mutate quickly keeps it one step ahead of efforts to contain it.
People who went through the vaccination cycle made up 2% or less of those hospitalized, said Sharon Alroy-Preis, chief of public health, adding that “they were definitely better protected.” Still, not enough people have completed the vaccination cycle to draw conclusions about the vaccine’s efficacy, Ran Balicer, head of the Covid-19 National Experts Team, said on Ynet Television.
The so-called British variant, 50% more contagious and possibly more virulent than the original virus, is responsible for the inability to date of the vaccination campaign and lockdown to curb the spread, officials at the Israeli Ministry of Health said.
While the vaccine is believed to work against the British variant, the more contagious nature of the mutation means more infections and thus more hospitalizations. The Ministry of Health’s main goal now is to reduce the number of critically ill, which are overwhelming hospital wards and exhausting medical teams.
The number of infections in Israel has fallen to just over 9% from 10.2% earlier this month, and people who are seriously or critically ill have stabilized at around 1,100. But the number of patients with respiratory masks has hit a record, Corona Commissioner Nachman Ash said. More than 4,600 people in Israel have died from the virus, and more than 7,600 people are diagnosed daily.
Balicer said it would likely take another 10 days for the country to see critical cases recede, allowing the economy to return to normal.
Netanyahu has set a goal to vaccinate all Israelis over the age of 16 by the end of March.
“The sooner we vaccinate and the sooner the population is vaccinated, the faster we can get the spread under control,” said Hezi Levi, director of the Ministry of Health.
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