A number of hospitals in the Golan Heights and the Galilee have begun to prepare to open additional coronavirus wards to deal with the record-breaking number of patients they have admitted in recent days.
Both Ziv Medical Center in Safed and Emek Medical Center in Afula are preparing to open their third coronavirus ward. Baruch Podeh Medical Center in Tiberias, which has also broken its previous record for number of coronavirus patients, has already opened three coronavirus wards at the expense of inpatient and pediatric wards, which the hospital is now preparing to expand.
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According to Dr. Kamal Abu Jabal, who heads the Ziv Medical Center's coronavirus department, there had been talk of closing one of the Ziv Medical Center's two coronavirus wards just one month ago.
"We decided to leave the two wards [open] because of the high morbidity in the Druze villages in the Golan Heights, but last week, we have faced an onslaught of patients and there is no choice but to prepare to open an additional coronavirus ward," Abu Jabal said, noting operating rooms were "open for emergency surgeries only."
He said the government waited too long to impose a third national lockdown, saying, "We hope the lockdown will bring down morbidity, but it should have begun before they started vaccinating the public."
According to the Health Ministry, 6,780 of the 93,865 people who tested for the coronavirus on Sunday were found to be carrying the virus, for an infection rate of 7.4%. Israel currently has 69,762 active cases of the virus, 1,070 of which are serious. Of those in serious condition, 242 are on ventilators. Of the 495,063 people who contracted the virus since the initial outbreak, 421,610 people have recovered. So far, 3689 people have died.
In a press conference, Sunday, Ash said Health Ministry officials were discussing what targets the country would have to meet to lift the lockdown, which was imposed on Dec. 27 and further tightened last Thursday.
"The exit metrics will include the number of confirmed [cases], patients in serious condition and the R [rate of reproduction], and according to those we will understand if we can sustain an increase in morbidity," he said.
He emphasized, "We are in a race between morbidity and the vaccine. Our goal is to vaccinate as many people as possible. We may be able to see the effects of the lockdown in the coming days. My sense is that the people are with us in this lockdown, and people are adhering to the guidelines."
Meanwhile, following Pfizer's delivery of another 700,000 vaccines, Sunday, the Health Ministry has announced Israelis aged 55 and over would now be eligible to be inoculated for the coronavirus.
As of Tuesday, 1.87 million Israelis have been vaccinated, 50,000 of them on Monday. A little over 20% of Israel's general population has received the first dose of the vaccine.
In a tweet, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the government would begin to vaccinate 170,000 people a day. According to coronavirus chief Nachman Ash, the Health Ministry has set a goal of inoculating 200,000 Israelis daily.
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