Highly Vaccinated Israel Is Seeing A Dramatic Surge In New COVID Cases. Here’s Why

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Medics in Jerusalem transfer a COVID-19 patient to Hadassah Hospital Ein Kerem. Many hospitals in Israel are at full capacity following a sharp increase in coronavirus infections.

Menahem Kahana/AFP via Getty Images

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An Israeli health worker administers a third dose of the Pfizer vaccine at a vaccination center near a cinema complex in Jerusalem. Israel is the first country to launch a national booster campaign for the Pfizer vaccine.

Menahem Kahana/AFP via Getty Images

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«Israel very much respects the World Health Organization but acts according to local considerations and the interests of Israeli citizens. We help the world a lot, an Israeli health official told NPR, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly about the issue. «If the U.N. didn’t secure enough vaccines for Chad, Mali, Myanmar and Guatemala, that doesn’t mean that Israel shouldn’t seek to prevent a pandemic from happening here.

Experts warn if countries do not vaccinate their populations, more variants will develop, threatening even vaccinated nations.

Looming Question: Will we need Covid-19 vaccines every several months? We don’t know.

The Cinema City movie theater complex in Jerusalem teems with young children and parents, but steps from the box office is a makeshift vaccination station where dozens of mostly older residents wait their turn to get booster shots.

More than a million Israelis received a Pfizer booster shot in the last several weeks. They are being watched around the world, as Israel is the first nation to get a third dose of Pfizer on a mass scale, just as it was ahead of the curve on the first round of shots.

«They make the test of us, said Etti Ben Yaakov, sitting in a vaccination booth with her brother as he got a booster shot. «But in the first (round), it was the same. So I don’t feel it’s something wrong. I think it’s good.

She predicts the coronavirus, like the flu, will mean shots every year. «We will have to live with the corona, she said.

Ido Hadari of the Maccabi HMO, which led the preliminary booster shot study, questioned whether regular shots will become the norm.

«I don’t know of any disease where we are vaccinated every six months, and to be honest, I don’t think the public will come to get vaccinated every six months, Hadari said. «But you cannot predict anything with this disease.