Director of Public Health Services in Israel, Dr. Sharon Alroy Preis told the Constitutional Committee of the Knesset earlier this week that due to the 2.5 million children in Israel under the age of 16, it is unlikely that the country will ever reach herd immunity. This holds true according to Preis, even if the entirety of the rest of the population were to take the vaccine, the fact that one-quarter of the population cannot be vaccinated would prevent the herd immunity from taking place.

The comments were made on the context of the country officially exiting its third lockdown that lasted 6 weeks, but without opening schools. “We met the standards established by the Health Ministry in terms of the goals of this lockdown and we are below a morbidity reproduction rate of 1. That is why we are lifting some of the sanctions. There is no doubt that during the third lockdown the public responded, but the game-changers were the mutations which seem to spread the virus much faster while at the same time increasing the number of serious cases of the disease.”

The estimated COVID-19 reproduction number in Israel, (the R number) has dipped below 1 for the first time since December 11th when the number hit 1.3. Thus, the government believes that the pandemic is beginning to recede, but slowly, and still at very high infection rates.

An “R” number above 1 indicates that an infection will grow at an exponential rate, while a number below 1, points to the infection’s eventual halt.

If we assume that after the public receives the first vaccination shot that everything will be different, it won’t. We are seeing now mutations around the world that are infecting people again. With a population of 2.5 million children who cannot receive the vaccine, it is likely that we will never reach herd immunity.

(YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem)