Omicron Variant Causes Increase In Infections, Israel Gives Fourth Dose Of COVID-19 Vaccine For Elderly And Medical Workers

Illustration of COVID-19 vaccination in Israel. (Wikimedia Commons/Amos Ben Gershom/Israel Government Press Office)

JAKARTA - Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said on Sunday, Israel will offer the fourth dose of the COVID-19 vaccine to elderly people (elderly) over 60 years and to medical staff, in line with the surge in infections of the Omicron variant.

Israel last week approved a fourth dose of the vaccine being developed by Pfizer/BioNTech, a second booster, for immunocompromised people and the elderly living in nursing homes.

"We now have a new layer of defense," PM Bennett said in a televised news conference.

"Israel will once again spearhead global vaccination efforts," he continued, adding the Israeli government's top medical official, whose approval is needed to expand the booster campaign, has signed off on the latest move.

Previously, Director General of the Ministry of Health Nachman Ash said Israel could achieve herd immunity when infection with the Omicron variant increases, as well as Merck&Co.'s anti-viral pill molnupiravir, approved for use in COVID-19 patients over 18 years of age.

Herd immunity is the point at which a population is protected from the virus, either through vaccination or by people who have developed antibodies by contracting the disease.

The highly contagious variant of Omicron has caused a wave of coronavirus cases, with infections worldwide hitting record highs, with an average of more than a million cases detected daily between December 24 and 30, Reuters data showed.

Mortality, however, has not increased to the same extent, raising hopes that the new variant is less lethal, a view Bennett also echoed in describing the second booster largely as an attempt to prevent serious illness among the elderly.

Daily cases in Israel are expected to hit a record high in the next three weeks. PM Bennett said up to 50,000 people may soon be infected each day. Meanwhile, eligibility for testing could be tightened to help ease long queues at testing stations.

"The (infection) number has to be very high to achieve herd immunity. This is possible but we don't want to achieve it through infection, we want it to happen because a lot of people are vaccinated," Ash told Radio 103 FM.

Separately, the Head of the Health Ministry's Corona Virus Task Force, Salman Zarka, said that herd immunity was far from guaranteed because experience over the past two years showed that several recovered COVID-19 patients were then re-infected.

Meanwhile, Israel's Ministry of Health said about 60 percent of its 9.4 million population had been fully vaccinated, nearly all of them with the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, meaning they had either received three doses or had just gotten a second.

But, hundreds of thousands of those who have qualified for the third inoculation so far have not taken it.

Over the past 10 days, daily infections have more than quadrupled. Severe cases are also increasing, but to a much lesser extent, increasing from around 80 to around 100.