Israel had an outbreak of Covid-19 with 40% apparently caused by Israelis returning from abroad. A father who had returned from Dubai infected his children who infected their classroom and then the school. The C-19 strain was what has been labeled the ‘Delta’ variant that originated in India. Of the 264 cases identified in the country since the beginning of June, 112 of them were people who flew into the country.
Officials are weighing reimposing mandatory masks indoors. However, Eran Segal, a computational biologist at the Weizmann Institute of Science, who studies the pandemic, said Israel was unlikely to see a serious new outbreak. In an interview with the Times of Israel, Segal said that the Pfizer vaccine seems to be effective against the variant and he doesn’t see a rise in serious cases or deaths as a result of this outbreak.
Other experts say that since 88% of the elderly population has been inoculated, there is no real risk to them. Segal pointed out that Israel is largely inoculated, so the numbers of those with a serious illness “are not what they were in January.”
So far, 12 children at the first school, in Modiin, tested positive for the disease. Mostly, those with symptoms were reported to have headaches and a runny nose, “like a bad cold,” said one expert.
Then another school in the Benyamina region reported 80 residents who had tested positive. Lastly, a cultural event in the Kimron Hall in Beit She’an on June 17th was the epicenter of yet another outbreak. In all of the cases some who tested positive had received the Pfizer C-19 vaccine. The Health Ministry recommended that all who attended the performance take the virus test.
According to the Jerusalem Post, a military task force warned Sunday that the variant could be 60 percent more transmissible than the British variant, currently dominant strain in Israel. The Times Of Israel quotes the Health Ministry’s statistics that Israel’s virus transmission rate has risen to 1.77. Under one means the virus is on the downturn, over 1 means the virus transmission is rising.
As of now, there are 290 active C-19 patients in Israel with 46 diagnosed on Saturday, down from thousands a day at the beginning of the year, but up from just a handful at the beginning of June. Israel now has 290 active cases. Since the start of the pandemic, 839,837 people have been diagnosed with C-19 in Israel, with 6,427 deaths from the disease.
According to a Jerusalem Post interview with Prof. Eyal Leshem of Tel Hashomer hospital the Pfizer vaccine is 88% effective against the new “delta” variant, compared with 93% effectiveness against the British variant. Weizmann Institute’s Prof. Eran Segal, said the appearance of the new variant was not surprising. “As long as we have travel inside and outside of Israel, then we will hav outbreaks among people, vaccinated and unvaccinated, and primarily among students,” said Leshem.
Health Ministry official Ron Balicer said that “what happened at Ben Gurion Airport is unfortunate,” but said that the new ‘Delta’ variant was already in the country. He didn’t expect the outbreak to spread very far since so much of the population has been inoculated.
Prof. Zeev Rothstein, head of Hadassah Hospital, speaking on Kan Radio’s Reshet Bet, said that Israelis have a tendency to get hysterical and panic but saw the current outbreak was no reason for worry. He said that Israel has reached a ‘herd immunity,’ and didn’t see any real problems with the new ‘Delta’ variant.
On Friday, Ben Gurion airport was inundated with travelers to the extent that there were crowds around the C-19 nasal swab testing station. Officials at the airport allowed nearly two thousand people to skip the mandatory swab tests unless they came from countries that were high risk, Argentina, Brazil, South Africa, India, Mexico and Russia
According to Cyrille Cohen, an immunologist at Bar Ilan University, Israel should take additional steps to protect against a new C-19 wave. “We need to be much more stringent at the border,” Cohen told the Jerusalem Post. He recommended more rapid testing. “People can infect others while they are waiting for the PCR test answer. Rapid tests can filter out 80% to 90% of the cases.”
The Health Ministry also said that they are considering the vaccination of 12-15 year-olds. Kupat Choliem Clalit, Israel’s largest HMO, said they’d received a 100% increase in that age groups’ request to receive the inoculation. The more children who are vaccinated, said a Clalit spokesperson, the less the disease will spread.
Israel had also been involved with negotiations with the Palestinian Authority to sell them over a million Pfizer vaccines, at $6.75 per dose, that were set to expire at the end of July. The Palestinians balked at receiving vaccines that were nearly out of date.
Other countries yearning for vaccines jumped in and said they’d take the vaccines.. Some countries, like the Ukraine, have so far only vaccinated about 100,000 people, according to a resident of Kiev. Countries like Canada have yet to have a mass inoculation with Canadians going across the border to get vaccinated in the United States.
Other countries yearning for vaccines jumped in and said they’d take the vaccines. But, the Palestinian Authority finally agreed to most of Israel’s terms. They dropped the demand that the order for the vaccines be signed by the health minister of the State of Palestine, since no such entity legally exists, but kept in the terms that they could also pass on the vaccines to the residents of the Gaza strip, something the Israelis had objected to.
Pfizer reportedly backed the Palestinians on the Gaza issue and said it would replace those vaccines Israel was giving to the Palestinians with others once the need arose.
On Sunday, Israel’s new Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said that Israel would hire more inspectors to insure that those who entered the country and were in quarantine abided by the rules that demanded they stay in quarantine for 10 days or suffer fines and imprisonment. Those who arrive and take a serology test that shows a negative result were free from the quarantine. The unvacinated children who had undergone the nasal swab at the airport had to be retested 9 days after arrival.
Bennett has so far been in power for a week and while a vote of no-confidence has been scheduled for later in the week, brought by former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his Likud party, that vote is expected to go in Bennett’s favor, according to pundits, even though Bennett’s historic 8-party coalition has a razor thin margin in the Knesset.
According to Tamar Zandberg, head of the leftist Meretz party, speaking on Israel Radio’s Galei Tzahal, the coalition has ‘good vibes’ with everyone working together, making compromises when necessary, in order to keep this government in power. The current government, according to analysts, is the “most democratic” Israel has ever had, stretching from the far left to the far right and including, for the first time, an Israeli Arab party.
Not only that, said one observer, this government seems to have ministers with a background in their fields. According to one pundit, this is the opposite of the way Netanyahu ran the government. Then, Netanyahu was essentially the de facto minister of every ministry in Israel, appointing lackeys and yes men, as if he were a dictator not the Prime Minister. of a democracy.
Pundits vary in their view of this government’s lifespan, ranging from a few months to four years. When asked what the impact would be if Netanyahu’s ongoing trial for three felonies resulted in a conviction, one pundit said, “Who cares, as long as Netanyahu stays out of power.”
As of now, Netanyahu has yet to vacate the Prime Minister’s residence, treating it as if he were still in power and it were an official residence, hosting visiting Foreign Ministers and American politicians and presidential hopefuls like Nikki Haley. After threats of lawsuits and threats of appeals to Israel’s high court, Netanyahu stated he would leave by July 10th. But will he? asked one observer, saying that like former US President Donald Trump, Netanyahu seems to have a difficult time realizing he is no longer in power.
Netanyahu also came under harsh criticism for not properly turning over the details of negotiations and other issues pertaining to the Prime Ministers office. He only gave the new Prime Minister a thirty-minute explanation of the state of the nation. Netanyahu reportedly also shredded piles of top secret documents rather than turn them over to the new Prime Minister.
Dissension is rising in the ranks of Netanyahu’s Likud party. Former Health Minister Yuli Edelstein said Netanyahu made a number of mistakes and needed to be replaced. Former Finance Minister Yisrael Katz echoes the same statements. Both men are positioning themselves to become head of the Likud should party elections ever take place.
Meanwhile Netanyahu is heckling the new government from the sidelines and, like former president Trump, planning a comeback. “Soon,” as he said when leaving the floor of the Knesset after the vote that unseated him. Perhaps that ‘soon’ was why he has yet to vacate the Prime Minister’s residence. Maybe, one observer speculated, Netanyahu expects the government to fall and he won’t ever have to leave the Balfour Street Prime Minister’s residence.
Or maybe Netanyahu’s hold on his party and his followers is slipping and he just hasn’t faced that fact. The next few months will decide that question.
