Israel’s newly formed government led by PM Naftali Bennet has declined to impose restrictions even as the pandemic resurgence is noted. Officials state that a spike in the caseload of the country on Sunday formed the marking stone when the government decided to reinstate an indoor mask mandate and not levy any further restrictions.
“This past week, there has been a rise in the number of people testing positive in Israel, but there hasn’t been a complementary rise in the number of people hospitalized. But we need to know, the delta variant does infect vaccinated people,” said Bennett. The government will focus on expanding its already world-leading vaccination rate and tightening quarantine enforcement, he further added.
Speaking on its precautionary step, Naftali said, “Our attitude is simple: maximum protection for the citizens of Israel with minimum damage to routine and the Israeli economy. Masks instead of restrictions. Vaccines instead of lockdowns.”
“We have reached a level of herd immunity in Israel that also provides cross-protection against the delta variant, and for that reason, the virus does not spread as quickly, it doesn’t reach the most vulnerable population and it doesn’t cause a lot of hospitalization,” Yoram Weiss, director of Jerusalem’s Hadassah University Medical Center, said on Monday.
The resurgence began on June 14 when only 26 cases were registered which spiked to 230 in a short span. So far Israel has vaccinated 59 per cent of its population and has been administered both the shits of either Pfizer-BioNTech or the Moderna vaccine.