Health Ministry Director-General Prof. Hezi Levi said Wednesday that vaccinations for the entire adult population were now available, while Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Tuesday that the economy will gradually begin reopening next week but in a "cautious" manner.
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The government is set to convene Wednesday afternoon to deliberate on a possible extension of the lockdown, which is currently set to expire Friday morning at 7 a.m.
Now, however, Netanyahu is pushing for a three-day extension that would keep Israel under full lockdown until midnight between Sunday and Monday.
Netanyahu, addressing the nation from the Health Ministry's headquarters in Jerusalem, urged the public to get vaccinated, setting a goal to inoculate 90% of people aged 50 and up within the next two weeks.
"We are in the midst of a race between the vaccination drive and the mutations," he said, referring to coronavirus variants spreading throughout the country.
He further expanded that the British variant was identified in 80% of those testing positive for COVID-19.
The Health Ministry, as stated, instructed the country's four national health funds and all hospitals to inoculate anyone over the age of 16. Children under that age were excluded from vaccine trials and therefore cannot be inoculated until additional research is conducted.
Levi's announcement, meanwhile, was a possible indication that the country's initial fast-paced vaccination drive had slowed down. In fact, "many vaccination facilities have stood empty," according to some reports.
According to Channel 12 News, Clalit Health Services, the largest of Israel's four healthcare providers, was forced to discard nearly 1,000 doses in recent days after people failed to show up for their vaccination appointments.
The latest data recorded by the Health Ministry showed that 3,236,859 (35.1% of the population) people have received the first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine and 1,855,071 were administered the second (20.1%).
Also Wednesday, an IDF Military Intelligence Directorate task force said the basic reproduction number, or R0 – the average number of people each virus carrier infects – has been steadily rising over the past few days and reached 0.99, a touch away from 1, the point beyond which the outbreak is worsening.
It said that was likely due to the more infectious UK variant, which accounts for the vast majority of new cases in Israel.
The task force pointed out that the high infection rates have failed to drop at all throughout the almost month-long lockdown.
Meanwhile, a total of 7,919 new cases of the coronavirus were diagnosed across Israel Tuesday, bringing the total number of cases reported since the pandemic began to 663,665, according to data released by the Health Ministry Wednesday morning.
The number of new cases diagnosed fell from 8,867 Monday, partially due to the lower number of tests conducted, but also because of the decrease in the percentage of tests returning positive.
On Tuesday, 9.3% of tests came back positive, compared to 9.9% of tests on Monday, 9.8% of tests on Sunday, and 10.0% of tests on Saturday. A total of 5,224 new cases were diagnosed Sunday, and 2,614 cases were diagnosed Saturday.
The death toll since the original outbreak of the pandemic rose to 4,888 Wednesday after 31 new coronavirus-related fatalities were reported on Tuesday.
As of Wednesday morning, there were 73,707 active cases of the virus in Israeli, including 1,789 patients who were hospitalized.
Of the hospitalized patients, 1,074 patients were in serious condition, with 292 on ventilators.
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