/cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/prisa/OOB3IC7JALSMN6GFPETBWVQ77Q.jpg)
A nurse prepares the third dose of the vaccine in Jerusalem on Friday.AMMAR AWAD / Reuters
Israel has extended this Friday vaccination with a third dose to those over 50, two weeks after offering it to citizens over 60. The booster shot is also offered, regardless of age, to health personnel , immunocompromised persons and inmates and prison officials. In the heat of the wave of the delta variant, the Jewish State has recorded unprecedented contagion data for six months, with more than 6,000 new daily cases (a positivity rate higher than 5%) among its 9.3 million inhabitants. Faced with the risk of a collapse in hospitals due to the boom in admissions with serious covid-19 infections,the Government has reimposed restrictions lifted since June and hopes to revaccination of the most vulnerable groups the exit of the fourth wave of the pandemic.
After consulting a committee made up of a hundred experts, the Ministry of Health approved the extension of vaccination with the third dose of Pfizer-BioNTech late Thursday night. The head of the Department, Nitzan Horowitz, 56, received the booster inoculation on Friday. "We are in a race against the pandemic and the most effective weapon we have is revaccination," he said at a hospital in the Tel Aviv area, quoted by Haaretz.
Neither Horowitz nor the Prime Minister, Naftali Bennet, have explicitly commented on the WHO's request to postpone the application of the third dose until the end of September, but they have not stopped encouraging older citizens to strengthen their protection against the covid with a third prick. "This is the right decision," Bennett said Thursday night. “Go get vaccinated. It is in our hands ”, he emphasized.
More than 775,000 Israelis, 65% of those over 60, have already been inoculated with the booster dose. A report from the Ministry of Health indicates that 121 out of 100,000 unvaccinated older people have suffered serious infections, compared to 19 per 100,000 among those immunized with the full schedule. The booster injection is proving to be safe, with only a few dozen cases of temporary and mild side effects - pain at the site of the puncture, fever and nausea - similar to those recorded in the previous two. The efficacy of booster immunization to contain the new wave of the pandemic remains to be seen.
The initial success of the vaccination campaign in Israel, which managed to immunize about 60% of the population in April, managed to reduce infections from more than 10,000 cases registered in January to a few dozen in June. But the biggest concern of the health authorities is the increase in hospital admissions of patients in serious condition, which have gone from 274 last Friday to 462 this Thursday.
This same week the covid certificate was reintroduced in Israel as a safe conduct in everyday life.
The so-called green pass, which is downloaded in a digital application for mobile phones, certifies complete vaccination, having overcome the disease or having a negative detection test otherwise.
The use of masks is mandatory indoors, and also in open spaces where more than 100 people gather.
A woman receives the third dose on Friday at a Jerusalem vaccination center.AMMAR AWAD / Reuters
The covid certificate, which was already in force between April and June, has been required again in concert halls, cultural and sports venues, bars and restaurants, gyms, hotels and cinemas, among other spaces. It will not apply for now in stores and shopping centers. Starting next Wednesday, it will be required of all people over three years of age.
To avoid discrimination against the unvaccinated, the possibility of accessing these places with a negative screening test is offered. But the expenses for those over 12 years old (to whom immunization is offered in the health system) will be at their own expense and will no longer be charged to public health, as in the previous period of application of the covid certificate. More than a million Israelis over the age of 12 have not been vaccinated, despite having hundreds of thousands of doses of Pfizer available to them. Columnists in the Hebrew press blame them for the runaway rate of infections.
