Israel’s Health Ministry confirmed another 89 fatalities on Thursday morning, increasing the total COVID death toll to over 9,000 as the country grapples with an unprecedented surge in the infection rate spurred by the Omicron variant.
The current death toll of 9,013 means that one in 1,000 Israelis have passed away of COVID.
There are currently 2,753 hospitalized COVID patients, of whom 1,147 are seriously ill, which means that Israel will soon break its record of 1,200 seriously ill patients.
Meanwhile, Yisrael Hayom reported that directors of geriatric and hospice institutions are warning that due to insufficient government funding, the high occupancy rate, and the absence of hundreds of staff who are in quarantine, seriously ill COVID patients are receiving substandard care.
“The Omicron wave has hit the geriatric population very hard, harder than many of the previous coronavirus waves,” Dr. Galit Kaufman, director of Beit Balev, a network of assisted-living and rehabilitation centers for the Maccabi healthcare fund, told Yisrael Hayom. “It means that we need extra budgets, extra staff – and the government isn’t providing them. They are simply not addressing the situation, and that makes it almost impossible for us to accept additional patients who should be transferred to us from hospitals.”
Hebrew University researcher Prof. Doron Gazit told Radio103 FM on Sunday that “we’re definitely at the peak of infections but we’ll see dozens of fatalities per day this week.”
“We could have done more and we should have done more,” he asserted. “If you want me to get specific about state policies, the government is definitely tolerating deaths. I think that during this wave, as opposed to previous waves, we will see excess deaths.”
(YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem)
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5 Responses
Interteresting…
The most vaxxed nation… Most boosted… Most vaxxed group “no one can figure out WHY Omicron which is the easiest varient is hitting them so hard…
Wow! Impossible to figure out! 1+1=3…
Yup, keep putting doctors, nurses etc. under house arrest for being exposed to what is mostly a harmless virus, and the few who unfortunately have really become sick with said virus will have no one to care for them and therefore either suffer substandard care, lasting damage, death, or any combination of the three. This is beyond stupidity, it’s murder, peshuto kemashma’o.
Call as spade , a spade. This government , like countless others in Europe, dont care as long as we are reducing our elderly and high risk population (read – sick and expensive, drain on long term healthcare and limited resources, no longerf contributing members of society).
This is obviously not the Jewish way and they should be ashamed of themselves.
It is also worrisome how the average person has so quickly adopted this same approach.
Hashem Yishmor
Every life is precious. And 1 death is 1 too many. RL
But if we are discussing percentages then one of out 1000 is not the worst. In the US it is near to 3 out of 1000. In the UK it is near to 2.5 out of 1000
In 2020 and 2021, private geriatric hospitals received special grants of up to NIS 200 million from the government in order to address the specific needs of the coronavirus crisis. But this year, the Finance Ministry has turned its back on the elderly in institutions and has stopped providing this funding.
Of ocurse – in 2020-1, Bibi’s goverment was running the show, now with Bennet, Lapid & Lieberman, things are getting all messed up. Surprise Surprise!!