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Israel ‘Leads the Way’ with 4th COVID Jabs for Vulnerable

An Israeli man receives a fourth dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine against Covid-19 at the Sheba Medical Center in Ramat Gan near Tel Aviv. (AFP)
An Israeli man receives a fourth dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine against Covid-19 at the Sheba Medical Center in Ramat Gan near Tel Aviv. (AFP)
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Israel ‘Leads the Way’ with 4th COVID Jabs for Vulnerable

An Israeli man receives a fourth dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine against Covid-19 at the Sheba Medical Center in Ramat Gan near Tel Aviv. (AFP)
An Israeli man receives a fourth dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine against Covid-19 at the Sheba Medical Center in Ramat Gan near Tel Aviv. (AFP)

Israel on Friday started giving fourth Covid vaccine shots to people with weakened immunity, becoming one of the first countries to do so in hopes of countering a case surge driven by the Omicron variant.

The effort comes almost exactly one year after Israel began a massive vaccination drive on the back of a data-sharing accord with US pharmaceutical firm Pfizer.

Israel's health ministry on Thursday approved giving a fourth shot for immunocompromised people, the same day that authorities reported more than 4,000 new cases of the disease, a high not seen since September.

Heart transplant patients were among the first to receive the additional shots at Sheba hospital in Ramat Gan near Tel Aviv, where health workers received test injections this week.

"I was worried at the start but after speaking to my doctor I felt reassured that it was a good thing to do, that it would help," said a 50-year-old woman, Rinat Orion, among the first to receive the fourth shot.

Galia Rahav, a doctor, said: "We had good results with the third dose which only caused secondary effects such as light, localized pain. We can't wait to see the results of this fourth dose."

Cardiologist Yael Peled said it would "increase protection against coronavirus".

'Confront the wave'
Israel on Friday also added residents of retirement homes and geriatric patients to those eligible to take the fourth dose.

"This decision was taken for fear of an increase in cases of contamination in such institutions that would endanger the health of these people," the health ministry said.

Prime Minister Naftali Bennett has said Israel, which was among the first countries in the world to offer a third shot to the general public, will be a trailblazer for the fourth jab.

"Israel will lead the way in administering a fourth vaccine to the Israeli people," he said.

Chile has announced it will also offer a fourth shot to at-risk people starting in February, while health authorities in Britain and Germany are considering following suit.

More than four million people out of an Israeli population of 9.2 million have received three shots of coronavirus vaccine.

The health ministry said Thursday that Israel will not let up in its fight against the latest Covid-19 variant.

"Our strategy to confront Omicron is clear: the stronger the wave, the more protection we'll need to confront it," the ministry said.

On another front in the battle against the coronavirus pandemic, an Israeli El Al plane flew in Thursday from Belgium carrying a shipment of Pfizer's anti-Covid pill, Paxlovid.

On Friday, Israel recorded a 24-hour tally of 4,916 new coronavirus cases, an increase of 152 percent over the same day last week.

According to researchers at Jerusalem's Hebrew University, new daily infections could rise to 15,000 or even 20,000 within the next 10 days.

A total of almost 1.4 million cases of Covid infection, including 8,243 deaths, have been officially recorded in Israel.

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North Korea Denies Removing Border Loudspeakers

A South Korean soldier works to remove loudspeakers set up for propaganda purposes near the demilitarized zone in Paju, about 55km (34 miles) north of Seoul June 16, 2004. (Reuters)
A South Korean soldier works to remove loudspeakers set up for propaganda purposes near the demilitarized zone in Paju, about 55km (34 miles) north of Seoul June 16, 2004. (Reuters)
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North Korea Denies Removing Border Loudspeakers

A South Korean soldier works to remove loudspeakers set up for propaganda purposes near the demilitarized zone in Paju, about 55km (34 miles) north of Seoul June 16, 2004. (Reuters)
A South Korean soldier works to remove loudspeakers set up for propaganda purposes near the demilitarized zone in Paju, about 55km (34 miles) north of Seoul June 16, 2004. (Reuters)

The powerful sister of North Korea's leader on Thursday denied reports by the South Korean military that Pyongyang has started removing loudspeakers used in tit-for-tat propaganda wars along their border.

South Korea's President Lee Jae Myung has vowed to reach out to the nuclear-armed North and pursue dialogue without preconditions since his election in June -- a reversal from his hawkish predecessor, AFP said.

The South's military said in the same month that the two countries had halted propaganda broadcasts along the demilitarized zone, adding last week that it had detected North Korean troops dismantling loudspeakers on the frontier.

But North Korean leader Kim Jong Un's sister, Kim Yo Jong, on Thursday denied the reports, saying Pyongyang had no interest in improving relations with Seoul.

"We have never removed loudspeakers installed on the border area and are not willing to remove them," Kim said in an English-language statement carried by the official Korean Central News Agency.

"Recently, the ROK has tried to mislead public opinion by saying that its 'goodwill measures' and 'appeasement policy' are meeting a response, as well as to create public opinion that the DPRK-ROK relations are being 'restored'", she said, referring to the two Koreas by the abbreviations of their formal names.

"We have clarified on several occasions that we have no will to improve relations with the ROK... and this conclusive stand and viewpoint will be fixed in our constitution in the future," Kim added.

Her statement came as South Korea and the United States prepare to hold annual joint military drills aimed at containing the North, from August 18 to 28.

"Whether the ROK withdraws its loudspeakers or not, stops broadcasting or not, postpones its military exercises or not and downscales them or not, we do not care about them and are not interested in them," Kim said.

The South Korean government, meanwhile, maintained a diplomatic stance, saying Thursday that it would continue to "pursue normalization and stabilization measures" with the North.

"Over the past three years, inter-Korean relations have been locked in a hardline standoff. To turn this into a period of dialogue and engagement, we must approach the situation with composure and a long-term perspective," an official from Seoul's unification ministry told reporters.

'Practical measure'

Last year, North Korea sent thousands of trash-carrying balloons southwards, saying they were retaliation for anti-North propaganda balloons floated by South Korean activists.

Later, the South turned on border loudspeaker broadcasts for the first time in six years -- including K-pop tunes and international news -- and the North started transmitting strange sounds along the frontier, unsettling South Korean residents.

Loudspeaker broadcasts, a tactic that dates back to the Korean War, have previously prompted Pyongyang to threaten artillery strikes on Seoul's speaker units.

The South's defense ministry said earlier this month it had begun removing loudspeakers from its side of the border as "a practical measure aimed at helping ease tensions with the North".

Days later, Seoul said the North had started removing its own loudspeakers "in some parts along the front line".

Lim Eul-chul, a professor at the Institute for Far Eastern Studies at Kyungnam University, said Kim Yo Jong's latest statement essentially kills any chances to improve inter-Korean or US-North Korean relations.

Calling her remarks a "death certificate", Lim told AFP her stance had "hardened" since July when she said North Korea had no interest in pursuing dialogue with the South.

"North Korea now appears to be formalizing not just a refusal to talk, but the impossibility of talks with both the US and the South," Lim said.

Kim's message is that "any tension-easing move will be ignored, suggesting that military de-escalation mechanisms could be neutralized at any time", added Yang Moo-jin, president of the University of North Korean Studies in Seoul.

"The timing -- four days before the start of South Korea-US joint drills -- signals that Pyongyang may shift to high-intensity military displays, such as ballistic missile launches, or tactical nuclear strike drills," he said.

North Korea -- which attacked its neighbor in 1950, triggering the Korean War -- has always been infuriated by US-South Korean military drills, decrying them as rehearsals for invasion.

The United States stations around 28,500 troops in South Korea, and the allies regularly stage joint drills they describe as defensive in nature.

The two Koreas technically remain at war because the 1950-53 Korean War ended in an armistice, not a peace treaty.