National coronavirus coordinator Prof. Nachman Ash said today that the obligation to wear masks in enclosed spaces would be re-imposed from next week. This follows a decision by the government that the rule would be re-imposed if the weekly average number of verified cases of Covid-19 in Israel reached 100 a day. Ash said the current average was 75. Ash also said that the Ministry of Health was working on bringing forward a consignment of vaccines to August, and that there were no further orders of vaccines in place.
Ash said that since midnight yesterday 123 cases of Covid-19 had been verified. "This is a very large number," he said. He added that at this stage the outbreak was chiefly in Binyamina and Modi'in, but that it was starting to spread to other places. "I wish to stress the importance of the tests. We are capable of carrying out tests in large numbers," Ash said. He made clear that people who have been vaccinated should also be tested, as they could infect others and also be infected themselves, but stressed that most vaccinated people who had been tested had a low virus load and no symptoms.
"We must all be aware of the requirement to self-isolate," Ash said. "For example, if a child returns from overseas and goes to school, that is not OK - and everyone should tell him and his parents so. This is not a time to be flying with unvaccinated children." Ash added that wearing masks in closed spaces was already recommended.
On herd immunity, Ash explained that it required over 80% of the population to be vaccinated to reach it and that "we are far from that." He said that half of the verified cases of Covid-19 were in people who had been vaccinated because most of the population had been vaccinated. "This implies nothing about the effectiveness of the vaccination. We are now checking whether there is a decline in the effectiveness of the vaccine after a few months, or whether this is because the Delta variant is stronger than the vaccine."
Despite the rise in morbidity, Ash said that there was currently no intention of returning to location monitoring by the Israel Security Agency, and that there was no recommendation at present to limit gatherings. "We are adding the use of masks. Besides that there are no other restrictions in Israel. If morbidity rises we'll recommend limiting gatherings of people - we still don’t know at what stage and at what level."
Published by Globes, Israel business news - en.globes.co.il - on June 24, 2021
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