Less than a month into a Covid vaccine booster drive, Israel is seeing signs of an impact on the country’s high infection and severe illness rates fuelled by the fast-spreading delta variant.
Delta hit Israel in June, just as the country began to reap the benefits of one of the world’s fastest vaccine roll-outs.
With an open economy and most curbs scrapped, Israel went from single-digit daily infections and zero deaths to around 7,500 daily cases last week, with 600 people hospitalised in a serious condition and more than 150 people dying in that week alone.
On July 30, it began administering a third dose of the Pfizer vaccine to people over the age of 60, the first country to do so. On Thursday it expanded eligibility to those over the age of 40 whose second dose was given at least five months prior.
In the past 10 days, the pandemic is abating among the first age group, more than a million of whom have received a third vaccine dose.