Nondescript COVID-19 vaccine חיסון קורונה ללא שם חברה
Nondescript COVID-19 vaccine חיסון קורונה ללא שם חברהiStock

Health Minister Nitzan Horowitz said Tuesday that Israel may offer an additional booster shot of the coronavirus vaccine to all Israelis.

“I don’t know yet. If we see that the vaccine’s efficacy drops after a certain amount of time, even after the booster, we could recommend a fourth dose, it’s possible,” Horowitz said at a Israel Hayom conference.

“We will make decisions based on medical need,” he said, noting the vaccines which are given every year such as the flu vaccine. “We can see today that the decision here to give the booster to everyone" was right. “Otherwise there would have been many more deaths here.”

The Health Ministry will convene tonight to discuss the approval of a fourth vaccine dose for people who are immunocompromised.

Israel has closed its borders to foreign visitors in response to the emergence of the Omicron variant of the coronavirus. Initial data suggests that the new variant is more transmissible than previous strains of the coronavirus. However, no deaths have been reported from the Omicron variant in any country yet,