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.



Bodies of Four Migrants Found as Boat Sinks off Greek Island of Lesbos

A dinghy transporting dozens of refugees and migrants is pulled towards Greece's Lesbos island after being rescued by a war ship during their sea crossing between Türkiye and Greece on February 29, 2020. Aris Messinis, AFP/File picture
A dinghy transporting dozens of refugees and migrants is pulled towards Greece's Lesbos island after being rescued by a war ship during their sea crossing between Türkiye and Greece on February 29, 2020. Aris Messinis, AFP/File picture
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Bodies of Four Migrants Found as Boat Sinks off Greek Island of Lesbos

A dinghy transporting dozens of refugees and migrants is pulled towards Greece's Lesbos island after being rescued by a war ship during their sea crossing between Türkiye and Greece on February 29, 2020. Aris Messinis, AFP/File picture
A dinghy transporting dozens of refugees and migrants is pulled towards Greece's Lesbos island after being rescued by a war ship during their sea crossing between Türkiye and Greece on February 29, 2020. Aris Messinis, AFP/File picture

The bodies of four migrants - one boy, one girl and two women - have been recovered from a sinking boat off the Greek island of Lesbos while another 23 migrants were rescued, Greece's coastguard said on Thursday.

The boat was detected by a patrolling coastguard vessel at about 2 a.m. (2300 GMT). A search and rescue operation was still ongoing, a coastguard official said. It was not immediately clear how many people may have been on the boat, Reuters reported.

Greece, in the southeast corner of the European Union, has long been a favored gateway to Europe for migrants and refugees from the Middle East, Africa and Asia. In 2015 nearly 1 million people landed on its islands.

Last year, about 54,000 migrants reached Greece, the second largest number in southern Europe behind Italy. The vast majority of them arrived by sea, according to data from the UN refugee agency UNHCR.