With morbidity levels expected to remain high over the next few weeks, hospital directors have warned Health Ministry Director-General Nachman Ash immense pressure on coronavirus wards as well as a shortage of coronavirus intensive care unit staff could threaten their ability to provide patients with adequate medical care.
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According to Health Ministry data released Wednesday, Israel's infection rate stands at 21.83%. Of the 405,181 people who tested for the virus Tuesday, 76,017 were found to have the disease. The reproduction rate is 1.23.
There are 537,755 active cases of the virus. There are 888 people in serious condition, of whom 187 are on ventilators and 18 are hooked up to ECMO machines.
Although 2,009,379 Israelis have recovered from COVID-19 since the outbreak of the pandemic, over 8,502 have died.
According to the Military Intelligence task force on the coronavirus, mortality rates from the virus have increased 40% over the last two weeks. In recent days, some 40 Israelis have died from the virus each day, according to the task force.
The director of one of the largest hospitals in the country said, "The situation today is such that because of the massive pressure on the coronavirus wards and the unprecedented shortage of doctors and nurses who are in quarantine, there is already serious harm to the quality of medical care for coronavirus patients in serious condition and patients in serious condition in general."
He said, "This is the most serious condition we have faced since the outset of the pandemic, and we've only begun to count the dead."
Dr. Nimrod Maimon, who heads Soroka Medical Center in Beersheba's Internal Medicine Department, said, "The challenge we now face today is twofold: dealing with the increase in morbidity in the fifth wave and providing patients with the usual winter morbidity with care. What characterizes this wave is that many patients suffer from other medical problems – like strokes, cardiac arrests, trauma injuries, among others – are also diagnosed with the coronavirus. This is a situation that necessitates the work of multiple teams and the management of many different hospital departments to care for these patients."
Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, Health Minister Nitzan Horowitz, and Education Minister Yifat Shasha-Biton met with health experts on Wednesday following their recommendation plans to end quarantine for students exposed to a confirmed coronavirus carrier. Following a meeting with members of the Israeli Pediatric Association Tuesday night, the experts called to postpone the move by one week to allow for morbidity levels from the Omicron wave to decline.
The proposed policy change, which would see students test for the virus twice weekly, had been set to go into effect Thursday.
In a letter to Bennett, Horowitz, and Shasha-Biton, Teachers' Union chief Yaffa Ben-David claimed that "the planned framework will result in many students confirmed to have the coronavirus coming to school, and no one will have any way of knowing. The increasing spread of the pandemic will put all teaching staff and students at risk of infection. We believe it is of the utmost importance the education system remains open. The principals and all pedagogical staff have enlisted to this end despite the difficulty and the heavy burden placed on their shoulders, and all this for the sake of Israeli children. I call on you to come to your sense and rescind your decision."
Opposition Leader Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday blasted the coalition's handling of the pandemic amid the rising infection rate.
"[Prime Minister Naftali] Bennett's and [Foreign Minister and Prime Minister-designate Yair] Lapid's government have given up and led Israel to the first place in coronavirus infection. The failure of seriously ill patients: There are over 850 today, and that harms the medical care of other hospitalized patients. The number of hospitalized coronavirus patients has broken all-time records. As for children: Despite evidence from the US of severe disease and symptoms that harm children who contract [the] Omicron [variant of the disease], the government has decided we will move toward the mass infection of all Israeli children in another two days: No quarantines, no enforcement, no organized testing – they will all get infected. And after the children are infected, and some of them, unfortunately, will require hospitalization and will suffer from symptoms for years, the children will infect the teaching staff, and will later go home and continue to infect Mom and Dad, Grandpa, and Grandma. That is a real danger.
"This failed government is marching there with eyes wide open and zero decision-making," he said.
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