In the past two weeks, daily cases in Israel increased from 700 to more than 4,000 reported today by the Health Ministry.
“These are numbers that the world has not known and that we have not known either,” warned Bennett.
Between a third and a quarter of Israelis are expected to contract Covid-19 in the next three weeks, according to a report prepared by an expert who advises the government and delivered to the cabinet today.
The expert, Professor Eran Segal of the Weizmann Institute, estimated that between 2 and 4 million of Israel’s population of about 9.5 million will contract the Omicron variant, warning that most will not find out given the paucity of tests affecting Israel. .
“From a certain point -20,000 or 30,000 infections per day- we will ignore the figures because we don’t have enough tests. The whole test system is collapsing,” Segal told Military Radio.
As is happening in the world, the restrictions applied so far will not work against Ómicron, and the peak of infections “will only stop when almost everyone who could be infected has been infected,” Segal told the Ynet news portal.
Earlier, the director general of the Ministry of Health, Nachman Ash, indicated that the herd immunity of the highly contagious Omicron variant was the most likely result of the current wave.
Bennett said the government is trying to find solutions amid huge lines at test sites.
He also noted that the government’s objective is “to allow the economy to function as much as possible, while protecting the most vulnerable.”
In his report, Segal said that the number of simultaneous severe cases of coronavirus will not exceed the current record of about 1,200.
Meanwhile, Israeli experts presented various scenarios to the Ministry of Health and hospital authorities, the most extreme of which predicts that 99% of Israel’s population will be infected with Omicron.
Even in such a scenario, the number of severe cases is not expected to increase similarly.
In an optimistic prediction, there would be between 1,250 and 1,750 critically ill patients, only slightly above the current record, and a more pessimistic scenario would see between 2,000 and 2,750 such cases, putting enormous pressure on the healthcare system.
Hospitals warned that while in previous waves the system managed to deal with 1,200 simultaneous serious cases, this time staff are already overloaded due to an existing flu outbreak and a growing number of quarantined staff members.
Source From: Ambito
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