The Hebrew Government changes its strategy in the face of the advance of the omicron variant and only limits the use of the vaccination certificate to “high-risk events” such as weddings and parties.
The wave of infections caused by the omicron variant forces Israel to change its strategy and lift restrictions. The country that was a pioneer in the implementation of the ‘green passport’ -local denomination of ‘covid passport’- decides to limit the use of this vaccination certificate to “high-risk events” such as weddings and parties. As of Sunday it will no longer be necessary to show the passport in hotels, restaurants, cinemas, gyms or swimming pools, which means the removal of barriers in leisure for the unvaccinated, very critical from the beginning with the implementation of this control system .
The epidemiologist Nadav Davidovitch, adviser to the Government in the fight against the pandemic, defended this measure since “continuing as before meant creating a lack of sense of security since those vaccinated are becoming infected again,” according to statements collected by the AFP agency. . The use of the ‘green pass’ will be limited in this new phase of the pandemic, but given the possibility of new changes in the future, the authorities have also decided to eliminate the expiration date of the certificates of those people who have a third or fourth dose of the vaccine.
For weeks now, Israel has ceased to be one of the world leaders in the fight against the pandemic. Local media such as ‘Ynet’ collected the latest data from the classification prepared by Bloomberg on the management of the health crisis in which the Jewish State has gone from fourth place, in June, to 37th, in January, from a list of 53 countries analyzed.
Record number of infections per capita
Prime Minister Naftali Bennet predicted that the fifth wave “may last at least another two weeks.” The prediction was made after a January in which the country became “the first nation in the world in number of infected per capita,” Eran Segal, a professor at the Weizmann Institute and also an adviser to the authorities, revealed to the media. Omicron caused 983,000 Israelis to test positive for Covid last month alone, more than 10% of the country’s inhabitants.
Israel was the first country in the world to launch a vaccination campaign in December 2020 and is currently administering the fourth dose to citizens. This booster dose is surrounded by controversy because from the Pfizer laboratory, a vaccine that is supplied in the Jewish State, they asked for more time to test its effectiveness before starting to inject it. From the Ministry of Health they assure that, according to their investigations, “the fourth dose increases protection against serious illness three times or more” among the population over 60 years of age.
Infections have also skyrocketed on the other side of the wall and the Palestinian National Authority has decreed the closure of schools in the West Bank for the next ten days.
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