Israel’s Covid surge shows world what is coming next
MOVE TO REOPEN SCHOOLS RISKS EXPOSING ALL AGE GROUPS TO INFECTION
Israel, once a frontrunner in the global race to move on from Covid-19, is now one of the world’s biggest pandemic hotspots. The country that was once predicted to be the first to vaccinate its entire population had the highest per-capita caseload of anywhere in the week through September 4, according to figures compiled by Johns Hopkins University. Its world-beating inoculation rate, meanwhile, has tumbled down.
Israel now shows how the calculus is changing in places where vaccination progress was fastest. It’s no longer just about whether people get coronavirus, but also how badly they get it and ensuring that vaccines are still working as the highly infectious Delta variant threatens to undermine immunity.
100,000 doses a day
More recently, it has led the way when it comes to vaccinating children and rolling out a booster shot of the Pfizer vaccine after research suggested reduced efficacy over time. Around 100,000 Israelis are getting inoculated every day, the vast majority of them with a third shot.
“If you are able to maintain life without lockdown, and to avoid very high numbers of hospitalisations and death, then this is what life with Covid looks like,” said Eyal Leshem, a professor specialising in infectious diseases at the Sheba Medical Centre in Tel Ha-Shomer. Since April, Israel has fallen from first to 33rd in Bloomberg’s vaccine tracker.
Vaccine hesitancy
The programme plateaued amid hesitancy from some in the Orthodox Jewish and Arab communities. About 61 per cent of Israelis have been given two doses, lower than in European laggards earlier in the year such as France and Spain.
Following the spread of the Delta variant over the summer, Israel has seen cases climb, reaching an all-time high of 11,316 daily cases on September 2. The number of people falling seriously sick and being hospitalised, though, has risen less than it did during the last coronavirus wave, peaking at 751 in late August, compared with 1,183 in mid-January. The trend is now downward.
As of September 6, at least 2.6 million people in Israel had the booster shot of the Pfizervaccine, according to the Israeli Health Ministry. The booster shot is also available for anyone over 12 who was vaccinated at least five months ago.
The wildcard is the return of schools. That could change the transmission dynamics and expose all age groups to infection because of kids coming home with Covid-19. The highest rate of new cases in recent weeks is among children under the age of 12, according to Ran Balicer, chair of the expert advisory panel to the government. There’s also a record level of testing.