Vaccine relief tempered by infections
WEDNESDAY MORNING brought the first major piece of good news in Israel’s haphazard battle with Covid-19 in a long time.
A DHL cargo plane landed in Ben Gurion Airport with the first consignment of Pfizer’s coronavirus vaccines. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was on hand to take credit for their early arrival and promised that he would be the first to be vaccinated, to serve as an example for reluctant Israelis.
Mr Netanyahu of course didn’t mention all the times over the past year in which he had said that an Israeli-developed vaccine would be on hand to save the country from the pandemic.
The national biological research centre at Ness Ziona is still in earlystage trials of its Brilife vaccine and, at best, this will be used for t he next vaccination drive in a year’s time. Meanwhile t he gover nment has ordered millions of doses from Pfizer, Astra-Zeneca and Moderna, as well as the Russian Sputnik V which probably won’t even be used.
But the arrival of the first shipments from Pfizer this month is still an achievement for Mr Netanyahu’s personal engagement with the company’s CEO, considering that just t wo months ago Israel hadn’t even ordered any doses from the pharma giant.
“It shouldn’t be taken for granted that Israel is receiving the vaccines at the same time as leading countries in the world,” he said at the airport and he had a point.
The first shipment was just one container of vaccines, allowing the health authorities to practice the logistics of transporting them in sub-zero conditions, but much larger consignments were scheduled to begin arriving daily from Thursday onwards in time for the expected authorisation from the American FDA any day now.
The four main public healt h insurance funds are gearing up to carry out over two million vaccinations within seven weeks.
But it was a rare respite from a week of bad news on the coronavirus front.
Only the previous afternoon the prime minister had been forced to announce a humiliating retreat from the decision taken by the cabinet on Monday night to impose nig ht ly c ur fews f rom t he day before Chanukah until 2 January to minimize social interaction over the winter holiday season as new infections spiked.
However, the ministers’ decision had been taken without proper legal consultation and without a clear recommendation from public health experts.
As it transpired on the morning after that imposing curfews would necessitate legislation — that is unlikely to pass the currently dysfunctional Knesset — the plan was abandoned.
Meanwhile the daily of rate of new C o v i d - 1 9 i n f e c - tions has started to rise again, getting close to 1,500, with over 3 percent of tests positive. Despite the spike, the government has continued opening schools, with all years now back in the class-rooms for the first time in nearly three months. And all shopping centres are to be allowed to reopen this weekend.
The government decided not to back out of easing the restrictions partly because a large proportion of the new cases have been traced to infections abroad, particularly to Israeli tourists in Turkey and Dubai.
Despite t he data t he government, under pressure from the airlines and the Emiratis, is reluctant to cut off travel to “red” countries and has yet to make Covid testing compulsory for passengers at Ben Gurion Airport, despite the testing facilities now being ready there for over two weeks.
“It’s like the government is holding a race between the third wave of coronavirus and the vaccines,” said one exasperated public health official.
“Right now it looks like the third wave is going to win.”
Right now it looks like the third wave is going to win’