New Covid Wave in Quadruple-Vaccinated Israel, But No New Restrictions “For Now”
A new wave of Covid infections is being reported in Israel associated with the Omicron BA.5 variant, despite the population being highly vaccinated, including many with four doses. The positive test rate is currently over 20%, masks have been recommended for the public indoors and a fifth-dose rollout has been mooted. There will be no new restrictions “for now”, the Government has said. The Times of Israel has more.
With coronavirus cases rising, Prime Minister Naftali Bennett and Health Minister Nitzan Horowitz met Wednesday with health officials and agreed there would not be new virus restrictions implemented at this stage.
The announcement that there would be no immediate change in policy came hours after coronavirus czar Salman Zarka said Israel appears to be at the start of a new wave of infections, and said that a fifth dose of the vaccine may be necessary for some sectors of the population…
While the Prime Minister’s Office said in a statement that there will be no policy change, a team advising the Health Ministry recommended on Tuesday that the public resume wearing face masks indoors, especially in gatherings. The team did not specifically direct the advice toward elderly and at-risk members of the population.
The mandate for face coverings in medical settings will remain in place.
In addition, the statement said there will be close monitoring of infection rates, including via testing the sewage system.
The meeting was held as case numbers rise in Israel, with virus czar Zarka saying it appeared to be the start of a new wave of infections.
“Unfortunately, it seems we are starting a new coronavirus wave in Israel — the BA.5 [variant] wave,” Zarka told a medical conference on Wednesday.
The Omicron BA.5 subvariant was one of the strains responsible for the latest surge of infections in South Africa.
Zarka also said that health officials would weigh the possibility of recommending a fifth dose of the vaccine to some segments of the population, but the health advisory team declared later that it didn’t recommend rolling out another booster yet, and said that such a decision will be weighed again in accordance with morbidity rates.
The team recommended allowing anyone over the age of five to receive a booster shot. It added a recommendation that health care workers be required to be triple-vaccinated.
The recommendations will be presented to Health Ministry Director-General Nachman Ash for approval.
Fifth time’s the charm?
Worth reading in full.
To join in with the discussion please make a donation to The Daily Sceptic.
Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.
Test test test and ye will find.
This story says they are cutting back on testing. My wife just went to the doctor for lingering chest pains and virus type symptoms. She was told the clinic didn’t need to test her for Covid and she overheard a patient in the next room pleading for a Covid test and the doctor told her she didn’t need one and didn’t give her one. The feeling I get is that the Powers that Be are cutting back on tests – probably so there is less evidence of continuing cases despite widespread vaccination. My wife also said the clinic didn’t ask her about her vaccination status (she is vaccinated, but regrets it). I told her I thought this was probably because of “guidance” to ensure there is little record of other ailments possibly being traced back to the vaccines. The testing see-saw is interesting to me. In the early weeks and months of the official pandemic, there was almost no testing (because no tests were available – PCR or antibody tests). Then, by about early April, everyone was tested over and over and over. This continued for years … and now we are apparently back to de-emphasizing and discouraging testing. This… Read more »
The problems with Covid testing for me is, there is no comparison with other similar ailments. 20% may have Covid, but how does that compare to the number with a cold or flu? Without anything to compare, it’s impossible for a layman to put it in context.
Dr Wolfgang Wodarg points out that there is no standardised PCR test, there are a number of different manufacturers of PCR tests & that every country is using different, in some cases multiple, yardsticks which can be set up to ‘prove’ the presence of anything they wish.
You make a very important point about the PCR tests. I actually tried to find out what the Cycle Thresholds were on the PCR tests the Alabama Department of Public Health (ADPH) was using to determine a “positive case.” I sent an email to the governor’s office asking what I thought was a simple question: What are CT numbers on these tests? An official in the governor’s office forwarded my question to the ADPH and got an “answer,” which he then forwarded to me. It was five paragraphs of scientific mumbo jumbo that did NOT come close to answering my question. I was left to conclude just what I had suspected: officials were NOT going to report this information. Furthermore, it takes no Sherlock Holmes to figure out why they refuse to do this. If the public did learn this information, the public would learn that almost all of the “positive cases” were from tests at the 35 to 40 cycle threshold. At, say, a 25 CT value, 80 to 90 percent of “confirmed cases” would NOT be “confirmed cases.” The all-important “fear” of this virus would have been much lower. This in turn might have harpooned the effort to… Read more »
Exactly. Almost every single covid related statistic published by govts and others has been meaningless, context-free with no attempt to compare to other ailments, past years etc. Quite deliberate.
What is clear is that the authorities first decide what they want to find and what they don’t want to find and act accordingly. After March 2020 but prior to the jabs they wanted to find lots of “covid” cases, so they deployed enormous resources to get the result they wanted. It prepared the scene for the “solution” they had already decided on. Once the jabs started being rolled out, they wanted to find lots of unjabbed positive cases to feed into their vax propaganda machine. So they created rules that meant that unjabbed needed far more tests that the unjabbed. They also contrived rules about what jabbed and unjabbed meant (14 days since jab = unjabbed) to skew the results. And they probably thought the jabs might actually have an effect and so were happy to continue testing in general. Now that most people are jabbed and testing positive left right and centre they’re not interested in tests. Least of all for jabbed people. And as they failed to completely eliminate the control group (i.e. not force EVERYONE to be jabbed), they certainly don’t want to keep a record of who is jabbed and suffering from other problems. That’s… Read more »
Thanks! You made my points far better than I did. I completely agree.
I’ve lately zeroed in on the fact that in the early days of Covid, hardly anyone could get a test – PCR or antibody. I think this was because someone knew this virus had already spread widely around the world and didn’t want the masses to know this.
It would be very interesting to learn how many people would have “tested positive” via either a PCR test or an antibody test in, say, late January 2020 or mid-February 2020. PCR tests weren’t widely available by these dates … but antibody tests were, or could have been administered widely, but weren’t.
I’ve read several studies about antibody test results in China – with the antibody tests being administered in January 2020. Antibody tests were not widely available in America until May 2020. Why the delay?
My wife passed away suddenly and unexpectedly in her sleep in April this year, otherwise a fit and healthy 56 year old. In her case she was NOT jabbed. Not a single person in authority medical, police, coroner et al has asked whether or not she had been jabbed. She had never been tested for CONVID either.
The world has gone mad. It’s not the malevolent creep of the elites authoritarianism that’s the problem, it’s the unquestioning obedience of the brainless masses. A social experiment that’s been both interesting and terrifying in equal measures. These submissive morons will commit the worst kind of atrocities in the name of “The Greater Good”; these people are the real scourge on society.
And yet so many countries insist on jabs for entry.
It makes it genuinely impossible to respect state authority. Any compliance now is just based on force and fear.
Sir Desmond Swayne Questions Sajid Javid On Covid Pass Deputy Director Job Advert
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ExoTkxb3qoI
WE GOT A PROBLEM
Stand for freedom & make friends with our
Yellow Boards By The Road
Friday 10th June 4pm to 5pm
Yellow Boards
Junction A3095 Warfield Road &
Harvest Ride, Warfield
Bracknell RG42 2QH
Stand in the Park Sundays from 10am – make friends & keep sane
Wokingham
Howard Palmer Gardens
(Cockpit Path car park free on Sunday)
Sturges Rd RG40 2HD
Bracknell
South Hill Park, Rear Lawn, RG12 7PA
Telegram http://t.me/astandintheparkbracknell
It’s not a wave of Covid infections
It’s a wave of positive tests of questionable accuracy and usefulness
Yes Bill Gates admits the Covid 19 wasn’t serious.
WOW – Did He Just ADMIT That??? Revelations at Last!
Title question says it all really – unreal, surreal, astonishing! https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/13.1.0/svg/1f603.svg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0XMqRHihUbc
Ivor Cummins
Stand for freedom & make friends with our Yellow Boards By The Road
Friday 10th June 4pm to 5pm
Yellow Boards
Junction A3095 Warfield Road &
Harvest Ride, Warfield
Bracknell RG42 2QH
Stand in the Park Sundays from 10am – make friends & keep sane
Wokingham
Howard Palmer Gardens
Sturges Rd RG40 2HD
Bracknell
South Hill Park, Rear Lawn, RG12 7PA
Henley
Mills Meadows (bandstand) RG9 1DS
Telegram http://t.me/astandintheparkbracknell
So, 22,501 tests detected 4585 case of positive test results. Earlier, 19,221 cases of positive test results were detected. This makes 23,806 in total. 89 of the people who tested positive are in hospital (0.37% of the cases of positive test results), 21 are in intensive care (0.09% of the cases of positive test results). Whether any of the 89 or 21 are actually being treated for COVID isn’t being told. Clearly, the sky is falling and with numbers like that, the population of Israel will soon be wiped out. Israel still requires masks in medical settings and forces cases of positive test results into house arrest. By strange coincedence, this horrible outbreak of a deadly epidemic occurred right at the moment when dropping the house arrest requirement was being discussed. This is now on hold. The current plan is to stop locking up people for the crime of being contaminated with unauthorized RNA only after the outbreak of cases of positive test results this restriction couldn’t prevent has receded. Everything still COVID-as-usual in Israel: NPIs don’t prevent what they’re supposed to prevent. What NPIs didn’t prevent doesn’t matter. But they must be kept because they didn’t prevent something they… Read more »