Deputy Health Minister Yoav Kisch said Israel "won't be able to avoid further restrictions" in an interview with Army Radio, Tuesday. "There is a clear trend. We're headed toward [a period of] rigorous restrictions," he said.
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According to Health Ministry data published Wednesday morning, 2,867 of the 83,308 Israelis who tested for the coronavirus, Tuesday, were found to be carrying the virus for an infection rate of 3.5%. Israel currently has 20,112 active cases. There are 392 people in serious condition, 144 of whom are on ventilators. So far, 3,030 people have died.
The military intelligence task force on the coronavirus released its latest report on the outbreak, Wednesday. In the report, task force members noted the rate of reproduction is now 1.21.
"Over the last month, the rate of reproduction is significantly larger than 1, an expression of the accelerated spread of the pandemic," according to the report. The task force's expectation is that by the end of December, Israel will have an average of 2,500 new daily infections each week.
There are now 48 cities designated as "red" and 60 "orange" according to the government's "stoplight system" of determining public health restrictions for local authorities based on the number of new coronavirus cases and the percentage of positive test results.
On Thursday, the government scrapped plans to impose a curfew over the Hanukkah holiday. Instead, Health Minister Yuli Edelstein that if the reproduction rate of the virus – the number of people each person on average infects – rises to 1.32 or if the daily number of new cases reaches 2,500, a special period of "tightened restraint" would be imposed for three weeks.
"If after this period we will get a reproduction rate that is below 1, we will stop with the enforcement, but if it stays high we will have to impose a lockdown," he said.
The "tightened" restraint period will see many businesses shut down – including malls and schools in red communities. It will also require a ratcheting up of quarantine measures for those arriving from abroad.
The second shipment of between 300,000 and 400,000 Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines landed in Israel, Wednesday morning. With Israel now armed with some 600-700,000 vaccines, the vaccination campaign is set to kick off Sunday, Dec. 20. By the end of the month, Israel is expected to have 3.8 million doses of the vaccine. With each individual requiring two doses for immunity, the vaccines should be enough to inoculate nearly 2 million people.
Health Ministry chief Professor Hezi Levy spoke with the directors of Israel's hospitals, Tuesday night, and informed them no directive had been issued to begin vaccinating people.
It remains unclear which hospitals will be the first to receive the vaccines and how many vaccines each hospital is set to receive, although Israel's largest hospitals will likely be the first.
On Tuesday, the US Food and Drug Administration told The New York Times it was set to approve Moderna's coronavirus vaccine for emergency use on Friday. The FDA confirmed Moderna's findings the vaccine was 94% effective in clinical trials after it was tested on an unprecedented 30,000 people.
In the meantime, a poll carried out by Haifa University's School of Public Health found that less than 30% of men and 15% of women are interested in getting vaccinated at this time. Only 20% of Jewish respondents and 16% of Arab respondents said they would get vaccinated immediately.
Broken down further, the survey of 1,000 Israelis over the age of 30 found that 7% of Jewish men planned to refuse the vaccine, as opposed to 30% of Arab men. Seventeen percent of Jewish women and 41% of Arab women said they would refuse to get the vaccine.
In total, 58% of Jewish men and 41% of Arab men expressed interest in getting the vaccine, some immediately and some after a few thousand vaccines had already been administered. Forty-one percent of Jewish women and 25% of Arab women said they would be interested in getting inoculated.
Professor Manfred Green, who heads the School of Public Health's international master's program, said, "The gender and ethnic differences that arise in the survey shine light on the populations on which explanatory emphasis should be placed with the aim of as many people getting vaccinated as possible in order for us all to go back to our routines as quickly as possible."
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