Soaring contamination cases, new restrictions in effect

Despite a large vaccination campaign, Israel on Tuesday recorded the highest number of coronavirus infections since January, authorities said, who imposed new restrictive measures on Wednesday.

The Jewish state has reinstated the obligation to show a vaccination certificate or negative PCR test to visit restaurants, hotels, museums and libraries and attend cultural and sporting events.

A vast vaccination campaign launched in December

This measure also applies to places of worship hosting more than 50 worshipers, the health ministry said in a statement, adding that the capacity in stores and shopping centers was now limited to one person per seven square meters. . The Hebrew state put in place from July certain measures that had been lifted in June, such as the obligation to wear a mask in closed public places and offices, against the backdrop of an increase in the number of patients.

On Tuesday, more than 8,700 new patients were identified by the health authorities, the highest figure since January. In June, only a few daily cases were detected. Israel was one of the first countries to launch a massive vaccination campaign in mid-December under an agreement with Pfizer that quickly delivered millions of paid doses in exchange for data on the effect. and the effectiveness of the vaccine on its population.

The Delta variant involved

This campaign had made it possible to drastically drop the number of cases, but in recent weeks contamination has started to rise again with the spread of the Delta variant in unvaccinated adults, but also in people vaccinated more than six months ago. The Hebrew state last week began injecting a third dose of the vaccine in people aged 50 and over, despite the World Health Organization’s (WHO) call for a moratorium on these doses of reminder to leave more vaccines available for poor countries, where the vaccination rate remains low.

Prime Minister Naftali Bennett replied that the administration of these booster doses in Israel, a country of nine million inhabitants, was not going to affect global stocks and rather allow the effectiveness of the 3rd dose to be tested. Naftali Bennett warned that a new lockdown could be imposed in September, the month during which several Jewish holidays will be celebrated, if the situation does not improve. In total, more than 950,000 people have been infected in Israel, of which nearly 6,700 have died. More than 5.4 million people received two doses of the vaccine and some 1.1 million received a third dose.