The third booster dose of Pfizer vaccine can now be given to Israelis over 30 who received the first two doses at least five months ago. This was announced by the Ministry of Health which has thus further reduced the minimum age required to request the so-called “booster”. Since the end of July, the third dose has been given to nearly 1.6 million people. Yesterday, the Minister of Health Nitzan Horovitz launched a mass vaccination campaign, concentrated in the peripheral areas of Israel, with the aim of completing the immunization of 3 million people within a month.
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In Israel in the last 24 hours, new infections have been 9,831: a number that approaches the record of over 10,000 recorded last January in the middle of the third wave. Compared to 141,472 swabs, the positivity rate has risen to 6.63%: an unprecedented percentage since last February and which also marks 678 seriously ill patients. Overall – since the beginning of the pandemic – the country has exceeded one million covid positives despite a prolonged and intense vaccination campaign. At present, according to data from the health ministry, there are still over a million Israelis who are not vaccinated at all, mostly in the age group between 12 and 39.