“The injection of a third dose of vaccine is authorized for people 30 years and over from today”, announced Tuesday August 24 the Ministry of Health in a press release. The Hebrew state being in the grip of a resurgence of the Covid-19 epidemic since the appearance of the Delta variant, the ministry wants to fight against an increase in contaminations.
Israel launched a campaign three weeks ago to allow people aged 60 and over to get a third dose of the vaccine, mainly Pfizer-BioNTech. It has since gradually lowered the minimum age, despite the call from the World Health Organization (WHO) for a moratorium on these booster doses, in order to leave more vaccines to poor countries, where the rate vaccination rate remains low.
The number of patients at the highest since January
Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett retorted that administering these doses in Israel, a country of nine million people, would not affect global stocks and would test the effectiveness of a third dose. More than 5.4 million people received two doses of the vaccine in Israel, 58% of the population, and more than 1.5 million a third.
The Hebrew state was one of the first countries to launch, in mid-December, a vast vaccination campaign thanks to an agreement with the Pfizer laboratory, which had quickly delivered millions of paid doses in exchange. data on the efficacy of the vaccine in its population.
This campaign has drastically reduced infections, but in recent weeks, contaminations have started to rise again with the spread of the Delta variant in unvaccinated adults but also in people vaccinated more than six months ago.
On Monday, more than 9,800 new Covid-19 patients were recorded by the Ministry of Health, the highest figure since January. The country has identified that same day more than a million people infected since the start of the pandemic. In total, more than 6,800 people have died from the coronavirus in Israel.