Israel will reach its capacity for conducting and processing PCR tests for COVID this week, a senior Health Ministry official said Saturday. According to the official, testing criteria will have to be changed, and in some cases (such as people who have no symptoms, are young, and do not have chronic preexisting health conditions) people might have to forgo tests.
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Currently, the healthcare system is capable of processing 170,000-200,000 tests per day. Last Thursday, 160,000 tests were conducted. The official said that some tests might be canceled and replaced with antigen tests.
"We're close to capacity, and that means long lines and delayed results. Part of the solution is to move to rapid tests, but there are limitations to that, as well," the official said.
"We'll need to consider whether or not to change testing policy, and in some cases forgo the tests, such as for vaccinated Israelis three days after they return from abroad … It might be better to earmark the PCR tests for people with symptoms or for sensitive populations. We will discuss this at the beginning of the week," the official said.
The official also said that hospital capacity for the fifth COVID wave will be assessed according to the numbers of hospitalized COVID-19 patients as well as the number of patients hospitalized with flu complications.
In addition, the official said, given the current status of the outbreak and given the high numbers of expected new cases, there was no significance to limiting participation in public gatherings, and the public did not see the current situation as an emergency, leading to concern about non-compliance with restrictions.
On Sunday morning, Prime Minister Naftali Bennett met with hospital directors from all over Israel to discuss preparations for a possible fifth wave of COVID resulting from the Omicron variant.
Health Minister Nitzan Horowitz and Health Ministry Director-General Professor Nachman Ash also attended the meeting.
On Saturday, a day after New Year's Eve celebrations, researchers from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem discussed the spread of the Omicron variant in Israel and said that rapid spread could be expected to continue in the next few weeks.
"In an optimistic scenario, the number of new cases will pass 20,000 this week and keep rising in the second week of January," they said.
The researchers said that the high number of new cases along with the predicted risk of serious illness among the elderly whose vaccinations are not up to date could be expected to create a burden on hospitals in the second half of January.
The Health Ministry reported Sunday morning that 4.6% of the 92,503 tests processed in the previous 24-hour period had come back positive, yielding 4,197 new confirmed cases in the same time period.
There were 31,958 active of symptomatic cases nationwide, including 200 people who were hospitalized. Of the hospitalized patients, 110 were listed in serious condition. A total of 45 hospitalized patients were listed in critical condition. There were 37 patients on ventilators and 17 patients attached to ECMO machines.
The reproduction rate stood at 1.83.
The number of Israelis who have received both doses of the vaccine and the booster stands at 4,240,819, with slightly over 5.9 million having received the original two doses of the vaccine. Another 6.56 million have received a single dose.
Thus far, 8,244 people in Israel have died of COVID since the pandemic hit the country in early 2020.
Meanwhile, an Australian researcher thinks that in 2022, the pandemic will end.
In an opinion piece published in the Sydney Morning Herald on Saturday, Coatsworth – Australia's former deputy chief medical officer – writes that a combination of vaccines and the "inevitable" spread of the Omicron variant will cause the world's population to generate immunity to the coronavirus.
According to Coatsworth, the "basic proposition of a pandemic… will be void." He writes that "we will live our lives again."
However, Coatsworth warns that if the global vaccination campaign falters, parts of the world could continue to see serious morbidity from the virus that could spawn new variants.
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