Dr. Asher Salmon, head of the international department within Israel’s Health Ministry, told members of the Knesset’s Legislative Committee on Monday that the Israeli medical community is very concerned about the imminent arrival of a new variant of the coronavirus from abroad.
“We are gravely concerned regarding the arrival of a new variant from South America,” Salmon said. “This is a mutation that is currently in the process of overtaking the Delta variant in the United States, and if it reaches here, it will significantly damage our chances of being able to avert another lockdown.
“The vaccine we have is less effective against this new strain of the virus,” he added.
Health Ministry representative Ilana Gans told the committee that, “We are already aware of a number of dangerous mutations that have begun to circulate in various countries around the world. There is a continued upward trend in contagion rates, and almost half of the new cases we are seeing are in people who arrived back in Israel and were not legally required to enter quarantine,” as the countries they visited are not considered coronavirus hotspots.
“We are already preparing hospitals for a situation in which we have a thousand patients in serious condition,” she added, “and if contagion rates continue the way they have been recently, we could reach that point within mere weeks.”