Despite the arrival of the troubling Omicron coronavirus variant in Israel, the reproduction rate decreased from 1.07 to 1.03 on Tuesday, according to Health Ministry data.
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Of the 108,300 screened for the virus in the past 24 hours, 636 (0.63%) tested positive. The infection rate stands at 0.63%. There are currently 5,570 active cases in the country, with 158 patients hospitalized. Of those, 117 are in serious condition.
Israel has reported 1,343,218 cases since the outbreak of the pandemic last year, including 8,195 deaths.
Thus far, 4,078,395 Israelis over the age of 16 have been fully vaccinated, 5,775,598 received two doses, and 6,326,037 got their first jabs.
According to the ministry's director of Public Health Services, Dr. Sharon Elroi Preiss, the new strain is cause for alarm.
Speaking at a Knesset committee meeting on Tuesday, she said, "There's no chance the vaccine will be as effective against Omicron as it is against Delta. We must buy time to understand the new variant, whether it is deadly and if it harms children.
"What worries us the most is the rapid spread of the mutation in South Africa. The number of cases went from 200 to 2,000 in just two days. They described how one person infected many others, both vaccinated and unvaccinated. From what we hear, vaccinated individuals do not exhibit significant symptoms, but this is just preliminary data … It will take a few weeks" to know more.
According to latest data, coronavirus hospitalizations have increased by 330% in the South Africa's Gauteng region, where the variant was first detected.
According to scientists, Omicron has 50 mutations, at least 30 of which are in the spike protein, which the virus uses to infect human cells and which current vaccines focus on to boost the body's immune system to combat COVID-19. As such, Omicron has a heightened ability to transmit and evade antibodies.
Elroi Preiss also said she would soon receive data from South African health officials on the effectiveness of the vaccine against the new strain.
Also on Tuesday, CEO of Moderna vaccine manufacturer Stephane Bancel told British paper Financial Times that existing vaccines will most likely be much less effective at tackling Omicron, and warned it would take months before vaccine manufacturers would adapt their doses.
Meanwhile, CEO of Pfizer pharmaceutical giant Albert Bourla told media on Monday the company had begun tweaking its vaccine to better protect against Omicron, a process that will take around 100 days.
He stressed there might not be a need for the inoculation because Pfizer was able to create vaccines for the Beta and Delta COVID-19 mutations, but they were never used because the original shots remained effective.
Nevertheless, the impact of Omicron on Pfizer's two-dose vaccine remains to be seen.
"I don't think that the result will be the vaccines don't protect. I think the result could be, which we don't know yet, the vaccines protect less," Bourla told CNBC news.
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