A 75-year-old man who succumbed to COVID at Soroka Medical Center in Beersheba on Tuesday died of the Delta variant, not Omicron, as had been widely reported by Israeli media, the Health Ministry clarified on Wednesday.
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According to Kan 11 News, the man had pre-existing health conditions and had not received a COVID booster shot after receiving the second dose of the vaccine more than six months ago.
As the Omicron variant continues to spread, the Coronavirus cabinet decided Tuesday night to instate a number of new restrictions in an attempt to combat it. Some communities will be instructed to switch to distance learning, depending on their morbidity and vaccination rates.
Meanwhile, media outlets all over the world rushed to report a recommendation Tuesday from a Health Ministry task force that a second booster shot (a fourth vaccination in total) be administered to Israelis age 60 and over, to healthcare workers, at-risk patients, and people who work with the elderly.
The task force also recommended that booster shots be made available three months after the second dose of the vaccine, rather than five.
At the start of the meeting, Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said he was "waiting with baited breath for a fourth shot for at-risk population groups to be approved."
"We expect to soon see a trend of the number [of cases] doubling every two to three days, possibly less. The public needs to be aware that we are expecting a dramatic rise in morbidity. We can't prevent the wave, there's no way. But we can and are giving the citizens of Israel all the tools with which to protect themselves from serious illness, as some of them will catch the virus," Bennett said.
However, not everyone at the meeting shared Bennett's outlook. Finance Minister Avigdor Lieberman was caught by Channel 12 News telling director of Public Health Services in the Health Ministry Dr. Sharon Elroi Preiss that "Omicron is like the flu."
Speaking against the proposed restriction, Lieberman said, "We've been living with Omicron for a month and a half. Thus far, about 12 people in the world have died of it, as far as we know. We have 81 [COVID] patients in serious condition, of whom 41 are on ventilators."
"As far as Omicron goes, at the moment I'm not seeing that it's having more effect than the flu. Like we live with the flu, we're living with Omicron," Lieberman said, adding "I don't think that at the moment it's right to take steps like restricting public gatherings. There's no justification for that. It puts us back to having to pay compensation."
Elroi Preiss responded, "Mr. Finance Minister, we've presented the data from South Africa. In the cabinet meeting, as well, which I don't know if you attended or not, we presented data from South Africa that showed increased hospitalization, with less deaths, but still a rise."
"Mr. Finance Minister tossed out inaccurate numbers. In South Africa alone, 900 people have died of Omicron," Elroi Preiss added.
i24NEWS contributed to this report
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