Coronavirus: Israel values ​​the replacement of restrictions by “massive contagion” of omicron to achieve immunity

The health authorities of Israel are considering changing their response strategy to the pandemic of coronavirus, in full spread of the omicron, to promote a “mass contagion model” of this variant that causes a mild disease, instead of imposing more restrictions.

With the infection rate continuously increasing, with almost 3,000 new positives for the second consecutive day – a maximum of three months – experts from the Ministry of Health are considering a change in policy to achieve herd immunity through massive infections with the variant omicron, as published today by the Hebrew media.

The positivity rate in the country has risen to 2.48% and the infection rate – the average number of people infected by each virus carrier – has shot up to 1.53, indicating that the outbreak is intensifying. .

However, the increase in infections does not imply an increase in serious cases due to covid-19 or hospitalizations, with only 88 seriously ill patients throughout the country, figures that remain stable compared to recent weeks.

According to Health estimates, in two weeks 90% of the new cases of covid-19 will correspond to the omicron strain, much more infectious than the delta although it causes milder symptoms.

The strategy of “mass contagion” is the one that Sweden followed in the initial stage of the pandemic, when he decided not to impose severe restrictions on people who did not belong to risk groups, in an attempt to continue with normal life and achieve herd immunity.

However, this strategy, applied before there were vaccines against covid-19 available and when the coronavirus it was more lethal, it was seen then as a failure and forced the country to change course.

Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Benet said yesterday that Israel is on the brink of a “storm of infections the magnitude of which we have not yet seen” and he warned that “many people are going to be infected” with the omicron variant without being able to do anything to prevent it.

“The storm will happen. We can’t help it, ”the prime minister, who is confined after one of his daughters tested positive with omicron, said in an interview with the public broadcaster Kan.

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