Health Minister Yuli Edelstein on Wednesday told the cabinet that Israel has at least four cases of the new mutation of the coronavirus that has appeared in the UK.
Three of the cases were returnees from England and are isolating at a hotel designated as a coronavirus quarantine facility, the Health Ministry said. The fourth case is under investigation, it added.
The government decided Sunday that due to the appearance of the new mutation, all Israelis returning from the UK (as well as Denmark and South Africa) would have to quarantine in government hotels. On Monday, that requirement was expanded to include every national returning from abroad.
Pfizer said Tuesday that it believes its vaccine was also effective against the new mutation. It also stressed that if it were not the case, the vaccine could be altered to counter the new strain within six weeks or so.
Israel launched its coronavirus vaccination drive on Saturday and has vaccinated 70,000 out of its 9 million population, Health Ministry data shows.
Having secured vaccines from drugmakers Pfizer, Moderna and AstraZeneca, Israel expects to have enough doses by the year's end for the 20% of its population most prone to COVID-19 complications.
Israel has reported 383,385 coronavirus cases and 3,136 deaths. It has imposed two national lockdowns and may soon order new sweeping restrictions amid an uptick in new cases.
Meanwhile, the IDF Home Front Command's Alon task force on the coronavirus has warned against gatherings over the Christmas season, saying it could lead to the disease spreading between different sectors of the population. The ultra-Orthodox community has the highest infection rate in Israel, followed by the Arab sector.
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Santa Claus makes a masked Christmas appearance in Jaffa this year
(Photo: Yael Guisky Abas)
According to data from the task force, which is in charge of the epidemiological tracing, the system has greatly improved its efficiency in the two months since it took over the mission.
At that time, only about 8-10% of new infections were diagnosed through tracking the movements of confirmed carriers, as opposed to some 55% of new cases last week.
In real terms, more than 10,000 new patients have been diagnosed in recent weeks after being informed by the investigative team that they had come into contact with a confirmed carrier and should be tested.
The data also shows that today an average investigation leads to 10-12 people who came into contact with a patient, compared to just four at most two or three months ago.
The Home Front Command and local authorities currently have some 3,000 people tracking the movements of confirmed carriers and are able to conduct the same number of investigations every day - twice the original target set by the IDF.
In August, 25% of coronavirus patients surveyed claimed not to have come into contact with any other people at all in the days prior to their positive test, whereas today the figure has dropped to just 2%.
As a result, more people have been placed in isolation, and the predicted chain of infection for those patients has been drastically curtailed.
Since the start of the week, the number of daily tests has risen to 100,000 - about a month ahead of schedule.
The task force is also beginning to stem the impact of two months of no tests being conducted at Ben-Gurion Airport and is now operating a testing site there.
Another seven hotels have also been designated as quarantine sites for people returning from abroad, with a total of 25 such facilities expected to be in operation by the end of the week.
Following the new restrictions, there has also been an increase in the number of people required to remain in isolation. On Wednesday morning alone, some 20,000 people were told they had to isolate, bringing the total to more than 150,000 people.
Even so, epidemiological investigators have not been required by the government to trace the thousands of people who have returned from Dubai in recent weeks before the decision was to isolate all returnees was taken although the authorities have that information.
In terms of the vaccination campaign, Israel's four health maintenance organizations have yet to reach the daily quota of some 60,000 people, and only about half of that number is being vaccinated every day.
Some 500 IDF medics and paramedics are to be deployed to assist in administering vaccines to the general population, with a daily target of 100,000 vaccinations.