Israel to return to the masks

The National Coordinator for Coronavirus, Professor Nachman Asch, said today that the obligation to wear masks in enclosed spaces will be reimposed from next week. It comes on the heels of a government decision to reimpose the rule if the weekly average of the number of verified cases of Covid-19 in Israel reaches 100 per day. Ashe said the current rate is 75. Ashe also said the Department of Health is working to bring a shipment of vaccines into August, and that there are no further requests for vaccines. Ash said that since midnight yesterday, 123 cases of COVID-19 have been confirmed. “That’s a very large number,” he said. He added that at this point the outbreak was mainly in Binyamina and Modi’in, but it was starting to spread to other places. “I would like to stress the importance of the tests,” Asch said. “We are able to do the tests in large numbers.” He explained that vaccinated people should also be tested, as they can infect others and also become infected, but he stressed that most vaccinated people who were tested have a low load of the virus and do not have symptoms. necessity of self-isolation. “For example, if a child comes back from abroad and goes to school, it’s not good – and everyone should tell him and his parents about it. This is not the time to travel with unvaccinated children.” Ash added that wearing masks indoors was already recommended. On herd immunity, Asch explained that it requires vaccinating more than 80% of the population to reach it and that we are “a long way from that.” He said half of the verified cases of Covid-19 were of vaccinated people because most of the population has been vaccinated. “This means nothing about the effectiveness of the vaccination. We are now investigating whether there is a decrease in the effectiveness of the vaccine after a few months, or whether it is because the delta variant is stronger than the vaccine.” Despite rising disease rates, Asch said there is currently no intention to return to the site by the Israel Security Agency, and that there is no recommendation at present to limit gatherings. “We are adding the use of masks. Plus there are no other restrictions in Israel. If disease rates rise, we will 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 © Copyright Globes Publisher Itonut (1983) Ltd. 2021