Isreal has recorded no new daily deaths related to COVID for the first time in 10 months.
The country pushes through the quick vaccination drive, with around 122 doses per 100 people.
Health ministry data showed that the country’s death toll related to COVID remained unchanged at 6,346 on Thursday.
The last time Israel reported zero deaths because of COVID was at the end of last June. It was after the lockdown actions restricted the first wave of virus infections.
Israel’s COVID outbreak has reduced after hitting its height in January this year.
The Israeli government started to relax the lockdown restrictions a month later. It happened as the rollout of the vaccine jabs against COVID became wide.
The country with the highest vaccination rate in the whole world is Israel. On Thursday, the nation reached a milestone of 5 million jabs of the COVID vaccine.
The health ministry said more than 53 per cent of the country’s population had received two doses of the vaccine. It sums up to around nine million people in the country.
Yuli Edelstein, health minister of Israel, said this a tremendous achievement for the health system and Israeli citizens. Together we all are eradicating the COVID virus, she added in her tweet of Friday.
Eyal Leshem is a director at Israel’s largest hospital, the Sheba Medical Center. He said that the country might be close to reaching herd immunity.
What’s Herd Immunity?
Herd immunity occurs when enough of a population has protection against infection, thus stopping it from expanding.
Experts at the World Health Organization (WHO) have an estimated per cent set for any population to reach herd immunity. It believes in achieving the state of herd immunity; at least 65 to 70 per cent of the population needs to be protected.
Herd immunity was the only description for Israel’s continued drop in cases as more lockdown restrictions were being relaxed, said Mr Leshem.
There is a constant drop despite striking near normalcy, he added.
This shows us that even if a person is contaminated, most people strolling around them would not be infected.
Last December, Israel began its vaccination campaign. Additionally, since then, it has been the leading country for the number of doses per head of the people.
The country has so far relied on a two-shot vaccine developed by Pfizer and BioNTech. In February, Israel’s health minister said that studies showed the risk of ailment from the virus has cut by 95.%.
