Health Minister Yuli Edelstein today inaugurated three new operating rooms at the Pdeh-Poria Medical Center in Tiberias, and announced that the Health Ministry will allot NIS 5 million to establish a catheterization institute at Poria Hospital.
In his speech, Edelstein announced purchasing existing influenza vaccines: Last year about 2.5 million vaccines were purchased, this year due to the global contending with COVID-19, the Health Ministry purchased about 4.2 million flu vaccines.
To date, about a half-million vaccines arrived in Israel in an inhaler delivery system, with another half-million injections. Next week, an additional 200,000 are expected to arrive, depending on the production rate in factories abroad.
Edelstein announced the expectation is that during the next month-and-a-half, all vaccines will arrive and be administered to the public. According to the Health Minister, the goal is "that anyone who wants to get vaccinated can do so, that there won't be a single citizen who wants to get vaccinated and won't have one."
Regarding COVID-19 Health Ministry guideline violations, Minister Edelstein said: "Coronavirus isn't a bicycle. It can go up just as fast as it goes down, quickly, if we don't put the brakes on it and if we do not know how to enforce it. There's a gap between the careful decisions of the Coronavirus Cabinet and what happens on the ground, in terms of violating guidelines on the part of educational institutions and businesses. Therefore, we will bring the Coronavirus Cabinet a proposal to increase fines strictly. It can't be that someone who's good suffers while the others get off scot-free."
Senior government officials said earlier that tonight, restrictions will be lifted from all red cities, with the exception of the Ramat Shlomo neighborhood in Jerusalem.