Israel shows COVID-19 cases can explode once life returns to 'normal' at 80 per cent vaccination
"Riots Shatter Veneer of Coexistence in Israel’s Mixed Towns"
By Amy Greenbank Posted Yesterday at 6:08am, updated Yesterday at 12:57pm
People flocked to the beaches of Tel Aviv when Israel almost completely reopened. (Reuters: Amir Cohen)
Life is set to be very different once 80 per cent of Australians are vaccinated — but one country has shown the dangers of being too confident and throwing out the rest of the COVID toolkit.
Key points:
* Israel recently had to reimpose restrictions following a huge surge in COVID-19 cases
* The vast majority of new cases were unvaccinated children
* Experts say the resurgence proves the vaccine cannot be relied upon alone
"You would still have to respect some rules that exist around vaccinations, around social distancing, around mask wearing [once 80 per cent target is met]," she said.
But Israel, which has a population only slightly larger than NSW, reopened completely after reaching the 80 per cent mark — and took one giant step backwards.
In recent months, Israel has reopened businesses, schools and event venues, lifting nearly all restrictions. (ABC News: Phil Hemingway)
Israel shot to an early lead in the race to vaccinate, inoculating its citizens at an eye-watering pace to deliver the world's fastest vaccine rollout.
Around 78 per cent of the eligible population are now fully vaccinated, just shy of the 80 per cent target set for Australia to start to open up.
But in recent weeks Israel has been hit by a surprise resurgence of COVID-19, with seven-day average daily case numbers surging past 6,500 this week.
Epidemiologist Catherine Bennett from Deakin University has been paying close attention to Israel's experience with COVID-19 and said the new surge of infections was"disappointing", as it quashed many people's hopes of a return to normality.
Professor Catherine Bennett, Deakin's chair of Epidemiology. (ABC News: Peter Drought)
"Everyone would have loved for the story to be a great one where you could live normally and all would be well," she said.
"They had gone to the future we hoped might be possible... but that was pre-Delta."
So what went wrong for Israel? Two months ago it appeared the country had all but conquered the virus.
Seven-day average case numbers had toppled from a peak of more than 8,500 in January to a mere handful by June after a successful vaccination campaign, and health authorities were jubilant.
The death rate had also dropped, from an average of over 65 a day in January to near zero by late June, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.
People take part in an annual gay pride parade in Tel Aviv on June 25. (Reuters)
Residents celebrated no longer having to wear a mask or socially distance.Some even travelled overseas, although they were encouraged not to.
But within weeks the Delta variant had entered the country, initially emerging in schools.
"The vast majority of those infected are unvaccinated children. There are also vaccinated individuals [and] the severe cases are among older adults 60 years of age and older," a statement from Israel's Ministry of Health said.
Elderly residents who had previously received two doses of the Pfizer vaccine began reporting serious symptoms after contracting the virus, sparking concerns that vaccine effectiveness was wearing off, according to Israeli epidemiologist Nadav Davidovitch.
Professor Davidovitch, who works at Israel's Ben-Gurion University and is a member of the national expert committee on COVID-19, said Israel had false confidence.
"People were celebrating the end of COVID and this was probably too early," he said.
Israel learns hard lessons of Delta
Since the explosion of cases, Israel has had to backtrack.
Masks have been reintroduced indoors, and the "green pass" was recently re-imposed, requiring residents to prove their vaccination status before entering certain venues.
'Green passes' are required upon entry to facilities like gyms. (Reuters: Ronen Zvulun)
Three weeks ago, Israel began offering third Pfizer shots to the elderly and health care workers, and 1 million booster shots have since been administered.
Israel has also tried incentives such as free beer to win over the hesitant, with more than 1 million people still holding out on receiving the vaccine.
As for calling another lockdown, Professor Davidovitch said the government would resist it for as long as possible.
"For me, lockdowns are only when you're failing."
Nadav Davidovitch is an epidemiologist and public health physician in Israel. (Supplied)
He said the main indicator would be if the hospitals were overrun, and said that, fortunately, admissions had halved following the vaccination rollout.
The death rate is also much lower, despite the surging cases.
As of August 17, the seven-day average daily death rate was 19, compared to a seven day average of 65 deaths a day at the peak of Israel's outbreak in January.
Professor Catherine Bennett said that was one small comfort, but the warning to Australia was clear.
"We know from Israel that opening up completely and [the virus] getting away from you is a problem," she said. - "Israel relied completely on the vaccine, Australia [should not] do that." - A man walks past people taking part in a silent disco event in Tel Aviv. (Reuters: Amir Cohen )
Professor Bennett said Australia was more likely to retain some public health safety measures such as testing, tracing and isolating, even after it reached its 80 per cent vaccination target.
"We can't get to 80 per cent and expect things to magically change if our case numbers are too high."
As for when complete freedom will be restored, Professor Bennett suggested it might be a slow process.
"If we suppress transmission by two thirds around the world, we might not see another variant emerge as quickly as we saw Delta, which means vaccines targeting Delta will work for longer,"she said.
"This means we will progressively grind it down to a level we won't see new variants … and the ideal situation is in a year's time we can treat COVID-19 like other infections such as the measles," she said.
Palestinian family threatens to burn Sheikh Jarrah home in eviction standoff
"Riots Shatter Veneer of Coexistence in Israel’s Mixed Towns "A House Divided: A Palestinian, a Settler and the Struggle for East Jerusalem "Israel's ethnic cleansing - The untold story of Sheikh Jarrah""
The family has been in their house for some 70 years. Think abut the inhumanity involved in this story.
By Rose On Jan 18, 2022
Issued on: 17/01/2022 – 19:53
Israeli police were in a standoff Monday with a Palestinian man who carried a gas canister onto the roof of his home in a Jerusalem flashpoint district as his family faced eviction. The Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood resident threatened to blow up his home rather than let his family be forced out.
Israeli media reported that Mohammed Salhiya had threatened to set himself on fire if the eviction order from the Sheikh Jarrah area of Israeli-annexed East Jerusalem was carried out. Salhiya’s family has been facing an eviction threat since 2017, when the land where his home sits was allocated for school construction.
Police and the Jerusalem municipality said in a joint statement that delegates went to the home early Monday to carry out an eviction order after the Salhiyas ignored “countless opportunities” to vacate the land as ordered.
Scores of police in riot gear surrounded the property from early morning during an hours-long stand-off. Roads were sealed off around the area, about one kilometre north of Jerusalem’s Old City walls, where clashes often erupted last year between Palestinians and Jewish settlers.
Jerusalem’s municipality expropriated the land, in an area Israel captured and occupied in a 1967 war, along with the rest of East Jerusalem, and later annexed, in a move not recognised by the international community.
An Israeli court ruled in favour of the eviction.
“I will burn the house and everything in it, I will not leave here, from here to the grave, because there is no life, no dignity,” Salhiya said as he stood on the roof of the building, surrounded by gas canisters. “I’ve been in battle with them for 25 years, they sent me settlers who offered to buy the house and I did not agree.”
“We’ve been in this home since the 1950s,” said another Salhiya family member, Abdallah Ikermawi, from the roof of the home. “We don’t have anywhere to go,” he said in quotes provided by the Sheikh Jarrah Committee organisation, adding that the family was made up of 15 people, including children.
A symbol for Palestinians
A tree-lined area of sandstone homes, foreign consulates and luxury hotels, Sheikh Jarrah has become an emblem of what Palestinians regard as an Israeli campaign to force them out of East Jerusalem.
An 11-day Gaza war between Israel and the Palestinians erupted last year, fuelled by anger in Sheikh Jarrah where families battled eviction orders.
Police said their “negotiators” were at the Salhiya home after several residents of the house “began to fortify themselves with a gas canister and other flammable material”.
Witnesses told AFP that clashes between security forces and locals erupted after the police arrived but later eased.
Israeli Internal Security Minister Omer Bar-Lev said on Monday a court had ruled the case was one of illegal squatting. “You can’t hold the stick at both ends by both demanding that the municipality take action on welfare for Arab residents and oppose the building of educational establishments for their welfare,” Bar-Lev wrote on Twitter.
Hundreds of Palestinians are facing evictions from their homes in Sheikh Jarrah and other East Jerusalem neighbourhoods.
Circumstances surrounding the evictions threats vary.
‘Plenty of space’
In some cases, Jewish Israelis have mounted legal challenges to claim the land they say was illegally taken during the war that coincided with Israel’s founding in 1948. Palestinians have rejected these claims, saying their homes were legally purchased from Jordanian authorities who controlled East Jerusalem between 1948 and 1967.
Seven Palestinian families in Sheikh Jarrah have taken their legal challenges against their eviction threats to Israel’s Supreme Court. The Salhiyas are not in that group.
Jerusalem City councillor Laura Wharton, who was at the scene and due to meet the Salhiya family later Monday, criticised the municipality’s actions.
“They could have built the schools in the same plot without moving the families. There is plenty of space,” she said. “The sad thing is this is the municipality itself doing this, it’s not some right-wing settlers.”
UK urges Israel to ‘cease’
As Sheikh Jarrah residents and activists monitored the situation from nearby rooftops, the British Consulate in East Jerusalem, located opposite the home, tweeted that Consul-General Diane Corner had joined other diplomats to “bear witness to the ongoing eviction”.
The consulate said that such evictions in occupied territory, in all but the most exceptional circumstances, were against international humanitarian law. It urged the Israeli government to “cease such practices which only serve to increase tensions on the ground”.
More than 200,000 Jewish settlers have moved into East Jerusalem since its annexation, fuelling tensions with Palestinians, who claim the area as the capital of their future state.
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