The new vaccines provide an updated formula, which scientists say will help stop infection by the Omicron variant. However, he added, “There is no question that if a young person wants to come and get a vaccine to try to prevent infection that the individual will not have a problem getting the jab.” He said that the ministry would likely not require vaccination, but rather recommend the booster shot to the highest-risk populations, such as the elderly, people with underlying medical conditions and medical personnel. Food and Drug Administration, have been purchased and will be available for anyone who wants one. Zarka told reporters that Omicron-specific Pfizer vaccines, newly approved by the U.S. Millions of Omicron-specific COVID-19 vaccines are set to arrive in Israel by the end of September or early October, said Zarka. These included: requiring patients and staff to wear masks in hospitals in the winter an increasing focus on good hygiene considering obligating and enforcing isolation of people who test positive for COVID and defining for how long that isolation should be expanding the availability of registered antigen tests and embarking on an education campaign to ensure members of the high-risk population get their flu shots and COVID boosters.Īt least two-thirds of participants said they would push for masking in public spaces and at large gatherings and for requiring people to test for COVID before entering a geriatric center-both policies that were in effect during previous waves of the virus. The war games resulted in a series of recommendations that were passed on to Health Ministry Director-General Nachman Ash. We want to allow them to go, but to tell them how to protect themselves.” We don’t want to tell people not to go places. “We do not want to take the easy route and day, ‘OK, we’ll close the schools,’” said Alroy-Preis. Sharon Alroy-Preis said that the war games were meant to define how in such an extreme scenario, kids could stay in school and the economy could stay open. But Hagar Mizrachi, head of the Health Ministry’s General Medicine Division, told reporters, “We know we did not treat those patients as well as we could have because there was just not enough staff to deal with them.”Īt the same time, head of Public Health Services Dr. Professor Salman Zarka, director of Ziv Medical Center in Tzfat and Israel’s “COVID-19 czar.” Credit: Maayan Hoffman.Īccording to the worst-case scenario discussed by participants on Tuesday, as many as 100 people could be hooked up to extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) machines, which require 24/7 surveillance by highly trained ICU staff.Īt the peak, Israel handled around 80 ECMO patients and 1,250 people in serious condition. And thousands of Israelis are suffering from long COVID, which medical professionals are still struggling to define and treat. Multiple lockdowns led to an increase in demand for mental health care. Many people who failed to seek proper preventative screenings or other care during the COVID period are coming in sicker as a result. In Israel, Zarka said that hospitals are already overburdened following the previous waves of the pandemic. And with COVID-19 expected to spike, too, he said health officials have raised a red flag. There were an unusually low number of flu cases in most countries over the past two years of the COVID-19 pandemic, but Israel’s coronavirus czar professor Salman Zarka told reporters that if Australia is an indication, Israel, the United States and other countries in the Northern Hemisphere are likely to experience a difficult winter. To date, around 218,000 people have been diagnosed with the flu, 1,708 people hospitalized-including 6.5% who were admitted directly to intensive care units-and 288 people have died. Australia, for example, has had its worst influenza season in five years, the country’s Department of Health and Aged Care reported.
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