JERUSALEM: Israeli President Isaac Herzog received a third shot of coronavirus vaccine on Friday, kicking off a campaign to give booster doses to people aged over 60 as part of efforts to slow the spread of the highly contagious Delta variant.
Herzog, 60, received a booster dose of the Pfizer/BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine at the Sheba Medical Center in Tel Aviv. He said he was proud to launch the booster vaccination initiative “which is so vital to enable normal circumstances of life as much as possible in this very challenging pandemic.”
The president was accompanied by Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, who urged the importance of booster shots in fighting the COVID-19 pandemic and pledged that Israel would share all the information it gleaned from the initiative.
“Israel is a pioneer in going ahead with the third dose for older people of the age of 60 and above. The fight against the COVID pandemic is a global fight. The only way we can defeat COVID is together,” Bennett said.
The booster campaign, with shots administered by health maintenance organizations, will effectively turn Israel into a testing ground for a third dose before approval by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
On the eve of the booster rollout Bennett said Israel had already given 2,000 immunosuppressed people a third dose with no severe adverse events.
His government hopes that stepped up inoculation efforts will help avoid further costly lockdowns.
Israel was a world leader in the vaccination rollout, and around 57 percent of the 9.3 million population has been double-vaccinated. Many seniors got their first shots in December, January and February as they were regarded as the most vulnerable sector of the population.
But since the emergence of the Delta variant, the health ministry has twice reported a drop in the vaccine’s efficacy against infection and a slight decrease in its protection against severe disease.
Daily new infections have spiked to more than 2,000, up from a handful of cases per day a few months ago and about 160 people are currently hospitalized with severe symptoms.
Israel’s president gets third COVID-19 shot, urges boosters for over-60s
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Israel’s president gets third COVID-19 shot, urges boosters for over-60s
- Israel was a world leader in the vaccination rollout, and around 57 percent of the 9.3 million population has been double-vaccinated
Strikes kill nine Iran-backed fighters near Iraq-Syria border: security officials
- Iraqi authorities denounced the “blatant attacks” on bases that belong to the Hashed Al-Shaabi
- Nine fighters were killed and another 10 wounded in the strikes
BAGHDAD: Air strikes killed at least nine Iran-backed fighters in Iraq on Thursday near the Iraqi-Syrian border, two senior security officials told AFP.
Iraqi authorities denounced the “blatant attacks” on bases that belong to the Hashed Al-Shaabi, a former paramilitary group now integrated into the regular army, which also encompasses brigades from Iran-backed armed groups.
Nine fighters were killed and another 10 wounded in the strikes that targeted a base housing the US-blacklisted Harakat Ansar Allah Al-Awfiya, two security officials said.
“The base was destroyed, and the rescue teams who arrived at the site were also targeted,” one of the officials said on condition of anonymity.
The base belongs to the Hashed Al-Shaabi or the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) whose positions have been repeatedly targeted in attacks blamed on the United States and Israel since the start of the war.
The PMF said nine of its members were killed in Thursday’s attack.
It accused the US of striking its sites, and said that these bases “had no role in targeting US bases in Iraq or elsewhere.”
The PMF added that “all fighters killed were carrying out their official duties, and some were stationed near the borders.”
And it called the Hashed Al-Shaabi an “essential part of Iraq’s security apparatus.”
Iraq has long been a proxy battleground between the United States and Iran, with the country’s successive governments struggling to balance relations between the two rivals.
It was immediately dragged into the Middle East war triggered when the United States and Israel attacked Iran on February 28.
The Islamic Resistance in Iraq, a loose alliance of several Iran-backed groups, have been claiming daily attacks against US bases in Iraq.
Iraq’s Prime Minister Mohammed Shia Al-Sudani denounced what he called “blatant attacks” on the PMF, whose members were “performing their sacred duty within the missions of our security forces.”
“This systematic and repeated aggression, and the targeting of sites and headquarters without distinction, is not merely a military violation. It represents a desperate attempt to create confusion” and weaken Iraq’s security.
