Israeli hospital administrators warn that the quality of care for patients in their Corona wards is compromised because of the high number of patients. In a conversation with the director-general of the health ministry Prof. Nachman Ash on Sunday, the administrators said the workload in their Corona wards is heavy and that this may also affect other patients in the various hospitals who are not receiving optimal care because of the allocation of resources to Corona patients.
Military Intelligence researchers noted Monday morning that “most of the critical patients today are unvaccinated. The number of critical patients who are not vaccinated is about 10 times greater than the patients who were vaccinated with the booster dose.”
The same military intelligence experts also noted that “morbidity indices continue to be very high and the coefficient of infection is still frenetic due to the characteristics of this period – an increase in the number of events with a high potential for infection, along with changes in the scope of tests during the holidays.”
This dire warning comes against the background of a surprising slowdown of the spread of the coronavirus in Israel. The encouraging news is the continuation of the declining trend in the coefficient of infection, which now stands at 0.92, meaning that the pandemic is retreating. No doubt, this development has to do with the fact that 3,084,656 Israelis have so far received the third vaccine dose.
5,587,006 have received the second dose of the vaccine, and 6,068,531 the first dose.
According to the Health Ministry, as of Monday morning, the rate of critical patients by age groups per 100,000 has been:
For people age 60 and under: among the unvaccinated – 7.4; vaccinated without the booster shot –1.7; vaccinated with booster shot – 0.6.
For people age 60 and over: unvaccinated – 185.8; vaccinated without the booster shot –38.5; vaccinated with booster shot – 4.3.
There were 6,456 new verified Corona patients on Sunday, out of 126,731 people who were tested, or 5.09% positive.
As of Monday morning, there are 714 critical patients, out of whom 194 are on respirators. To date, 7,541 have died from the pandemic since its outbreak in February 2020.
Are you confused by the inconsistency in the above report? Welcome to the club. But out of this mish-mash of seemingly contradictory information, one indisputable fact emerges: unvaccinated people are jamming Israel’s healthcare facilities, impacting the entire system and endangering the lives of everyone else, if not through direct infection then by denial of medical service to everyone else.
Much has been said in the past about the right of a democracy to protect itself by suspending certain rights in time of an emergency. It is my personal opinion (and to be clear, not the position of this paper) that this appears to be such a time in Israel, where the government should appeal to the legislator and the courts for the temporary suspension of individual freedom for the duration of a shot in the arms of vaccine refusniks.
Dr. Osnat Lev Zion Korach, director of Assaf Harofeh Shamir Hospital, told Kan 11 News on Monday morning: “Hospitals need additional staff urgently. The teams are very committed and do their best, but we took them to the end of more than a year and a half of extremely hard work. The state needs to understand that it no longer needs ventilation machines but teams that will operate everything. If they do not prioritize and there are no standards for medical staff – it will be just like the parable about the horse who got used to not eating and died.”