Israel to expand COVID booster shots to anyone over 40

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Israel’s vaccination committee recommended on Thursday the administration of the third COVID booster shot to Israelis aged 40 and up, lowering it from the current 50, as a renewed COVID outbreak has triggered soaring infection rates.

The Health Ministry is expected to accept the recommendation, and Minister Nitzan Horowitz said on Twitter that teachers would also be eligible for a third dose of the Pfizer vaccine.

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Israel’s biggest health maintenance organization, Clalit, said its members can book an appointment to get the shot as early as Friday morning.

Israel began providing booster shots to Israelis over 60 and some at-risk groups over two weeks ago. Over the weekend, it expanded the campaign to the 50-59 age cohort, to employees of geriatric and health care institutions, and to people who suffer from underlying conditions.

“We can say that today booster shots for 60-year-olds and now even people over 50 are doing their job in the sense that they reduce infection rates,” Israel’s top coronavirus expert told Ynet news site Thursday, noting that infection rates among Israelis 60 and over are “slowing down.” Prof. Ran Balicer also noted that “In fact, over the past two days we see a curb in the number of new cases in 60-year-olds and over, who are mostly inoculated with a third dose.”

Balicer’s remarks came one day after Maccabi, one of Israel’s leading health care providers, announced Wednesday that the third shot of the coronavirus vaccine is 86 percent effective in preventing COVID-19 infection among people 60 and older.

As Israel continues to roll out third booster shots for more of its population, it continues to ignore the plea made by the World Health Organization earlier this month, when it urged wealthy countries to stop with their third-shot programs. The WHO claims that these efforts while many poor countries have barely begun with their first doses are both morally and epidemiologically unacceptable.

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Israel hopes that a third dose will boost antibody levels and thereby stop the spread of the virus, and above all the rise in the number of serious cases. Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, who has advocated widespread vaccination as an alternative to lockdowns, recently instructed the directors of Israel’s four health maintenance organizations to double their vaccination rates and to offer inoculations around the clock.

More than 1.2 million Israelis have received their third shot; some 5.4 million Israelis of all age groups have received their second.