Health Minister Yuli Edelstein expresses optimism about the vaccination campaign and says that any Israeli who wants to be inoculated will be able to by the end of March. However, he adds that with current infection numbers skyrocketing, “there is no avoiding a full-blown lockdown, including closing schools.”
A lockdown entered effect last week but has been slammed as ineffective and full of holes, such as the education system and workplaces remaining open and a lack of enforcement.
“We’re going through a very severe outbreak and are probably in a more dire situation than we were in at the beginning of September,” Edelstein says in Nazareth during a tour of vaccination centers in the country’s north.
“We will demand a full-blown lockdown for two weeks. We need to deal one strong blow to morbidity rates and embark on a new path together,” he says.
He says the Arab community is starting to catch up to the rest of the country in vaccination rates.
Edelstein claims that 10% of all vaccines given in the world thus far have been in Israel.
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From the Liveblog of
Sunday, January 3, 2021
