Omicron could lead Israel to herd immunity
Promising statement from health officials
Gabriel Thomas (GT)May 9, 2025
A wave of Omicron infections could cause Israel to reach herd immunity, the country's top health official said on Sunday as the number of daily cases continued to rise.
The highly transmissible variant of Omicron has led to a surge in coronavirus cases around the world. According to the Reuters news agency, an average of just over a million cases were detected daily between December 24th and 30th. The death toll has not increased by the same amount, however, which feeds hope that the new variant is less fatal.
By the end of December, Israel managed to fend off Omicron to some extent, but as infection rates are now picking up pace, daily cases are expected to hit record highs over the next three weeks. This could lead to herd immunity, said the director general of the health ministry, Nachman Ash.
"The price will be a large number of infections," Ash told 103FM Radio. "The numbers have to be very high to get herd immunity. It's possible, but we don't want to get it through infection, we want to get a lot of people vaccinated," he said.
Herd immunity is the point at which a population is protected from a virus, either through vaccination or because people have developed antibodies from contracting the disease.
Around 60% of Israel's 9.4 million residents are fully vaccinated - almost all of them with the Pfizer (NYSE: PFE) / BioNTech vaccine - meaning they either received three doses or recently their second dose, according to the Department of Health got. But hundreds of thousands of people who are eligible for a third vaccination have not yet received it.
About 1.3 million coronavirus cases have been documented in Israel since the pandemic began. According to Eran Segal, a data scientist at the Weizmann Institute of Science and advisor to the government, between two and four million people could be infected by the end of January, if the Omicron wave could subside.
The head of the Ministry of Health's coronavirus task force, Salman Zarka, said herd immunity was far from guaranteed.
"We have to be very careful, especially given the experience of the past two years in which we have seen people who have recovered (from the coronavirus) have been re-infected," Zarka told Ynet television.
In the past ten days, daily infections have more than quadrupled. The number of serious cases has also increased, albeit to a far lesser extent, namely from around 80 to around 100.
While keeping a close eye on the serious illness, Ash is considering approving a fourth dose of vaccine for people over 60 after it was approved last week for the immunocompromised and elderly in nursing homes.
