Dr. Orly Greenfield, the medical director for the Magen Israel program, on Monday morning emphasized to Galei Zahal the importance of adherence to the "Green Badge" precautions for reopening the economy.
"I am happy that the economy is reopening, but I am very concerned about it," she said. "If there is no adherence to the Green Badge, we are liable to end up in a situation where there is an additional rise in infections, and we will need to backtrack."
Regarding the vaccines, she said: "Because of the high number of people vaccinated, we can be more liberal when making decisions, and 'absorb' a certain infection rate. We need to be measuring by the number of people [with coronavirus] who are in serious condition."
When asked about the three members of one family who were found to have the New York variant of coronavirus, Dr. Greenfield confirmed the report and said that they did not fully cooperate with the epidemiological research, and therefore it was not possible to locate all those who they came in contact with and examine how much the strain has spread.
"The family members only partially cooperated," she explained. "In the meantime we have not located other people infected with this strain. We do not yet know if it is more dangerous, so there is no reason to spread too much worry."
Last week, Professor Gabi Barabash, a former Health Ministry Director General, said that the vaccine is only about 50% effective against the New York variant.