Israeli health authorities began administering coronavirus booster shots Friday to people over 60 who’ve already received both does of a vaccine, in a bid to combat a recent spike in cases. The decision was announced Thursday by the Israeli prime minister, Naftali Bennett, making Israel the first country to offer a third dose of a Western vaccine to its citizens on a wide scale. ″Israel is a pioneer in going ahead with the third dose for older people of the age of 60 and above,″ Bennett said during Friday’s launch. The decision comes following rising infections caused by the Delta variant, and indications that the vaccine’s efficacy drops over time. Bennett said that a team of expert advisers had overwhelmingly agreed that the booster campaign was necessary.

History was made on Wednesday when thanks to the transfer of a kidney from Israel to Abu Dhabi and Abu Dhabi to Israel, three kidney transplants were carried out on Wednesday, two in Israel and one in Abu Dhabi. At 5:30 am., the first surgery was performed at Sheba Medical Center near Tel Aviv, with doctors removing a kidney from Shani Markowitz, 39. The kidney was placed in a special cooler and rushed to Ben-Gurion Airport to be placed on a three-hour flight to Abu Dhabi. At 7:30 a.m., the next surgery took place in Abu Dhabi, with doctors removing a kidney from an Emirati woman. The kidney was rushed to the airport and flown to Israel to be transplanted in an Israeli woman at Rambam Medical Center in Haifa.

As over 2,000 new coronavirus vases were confirmed in Israel on Wednesday for the second straight day, with 153 seriously ill virus patients, several hospitals around the country began reopening their coronavirus wards. Meanwhile, the Bennett-Lapid government is reluctant to implement any major restrictions and some health experts are expressing alarm, saying that Israel is amid a fourth wave that won’t just disappear without restrictions and that the number of seriously ill patients may triple itself in another month. Over the past few days, tension over the coronavirus situation has made the headlines, with the main players being the Education Ministry versus the Health Ministry.

As Israel’s coronavirus cases continue to surge, the US Centers for Disease Control on Monday raised its travel alert level to high. The CDC now lists Israel as “Level 3: High,” only one level below its most severe travel rating, a major jump since June when the CDC lowered Israel’s travel rating to “Level 1: Low.” The CDC website warns that US citizens traveling to Israel should be fully vaccinated and those who are unvaccinated should avoid non-essential trips there. “Because of the current situation in Israel, all travelers may be at risk for getting and spreading COVID-19 variants,” it states. Israel on Tuesday confirmed a high of over 2,000 new daily coronavirus cases in the previous 24 hours, the highest number since March.

India’s excess deaths during the pandemic could be a staggering 10 times the official COVID-19 toll, likely making it modern India’s worst human tragedy, according to the most comprehensive research yet on the ravages of the virus in the South Asian country. Most experts believe India’s official toll of more than 414,000 dead is a vast undercount, but the government has dismissed those concerns as exaggerated and misleading. The report released Tuesday estimated excess deaths — the gap between those recorded and those that would have been expected — to be 3 million to 4.7 million between January 2020 and June 2021.

U.S. life expectancy fell by a year and a half in 2020, the largest one-year decline since World War II, public health officials said Wednesday. The decrease for both Black Americans and Hispanic Americans was even worse: three years. The drop spelled out by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is due mainly to the COVID-19 pandemic, which health officials said is responsible for close to 74% of the overall life expectancy decline. More than 3.3 million Americans died last year, far more than any other year in U.S. history, with COVID-19 accounting for about 11% of those deaths. Black life expectancy has not fallen so much in one year since the mid-1930s, during the Great Depression.

COVID-19 deaths and cases are on the rise again globally in a dispiriting setback that is triggering another round of restrictions and dampening hopes for a return to normal life. The World Health Organization reported Wednesday that deaths climbed last week after nine straight weeks of decline. It recorded more than 55,000 lives lost, a 3% increase from the week before. Cases rose 10% last week to nearly 3 million, with the highest numbers recorded in Brazil, India, Indonesia and Britain, WHO said. The reversal has been attributed to low vaccination rates, the relaxation of mask rules and other precautions, and the swift spread of the more-contagious delta variant, which WHO said has now been identified in 111 countries and is expected to become globally dominant in the coming months.

Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said Wednesday that the country can beat a concerning rise in new coronavirus cases without a nationwide shutdown, but that depends in part on people wearing masks indoors to suppress the spread of the highly contagious delta variant. Bennett told reporters at a news conference that he has instructed police to step up enforcement of the mask rule with high fines for people who violate it. “That’s the fair thing to do, because it’s wrong to have people who are lazy and hurt the rest of the public,” Bennett said. A national shutdown, he said, was “a last resort,” a reflection of the government’s effort to keep Israel’s economy strong. “Stop shaking hands,” he advised Israelis, suggesting an elbow bump instead.

The COVID-19 curve in the U.S. is rising again after months of decline, with the number of new cases per day doubling over the past three weeks, driven by the fast-spreading delta variant, lagging vaccination rates and Fourth of July gatherings. Confirmed infections climbed to an average of about 23,600 a day on Monday, up from 11,300 on June 23, according to Johns Hopkins University data. And all but two states — Maine and South Dakota — reported that case numbers have gone up over the past two weeks. “It is certainly no coincidence that we are looking at exactly the time that we would expect cases to be occurring after the July Fourth weekend,” said Dr. Bill Powderly, co-director of the infectious-disease division at Washington University’s School of Medicine in St. Louis.

As Israel grapples with a surge of coronavirus cases due to the spread of the Delta variant, preliminary data seems to indicate that those who recovered from COVID have a higher level of protection than those who were vaccinated, according to Health Ministry data. About 3,000 vaccinated Israelis contracted COVID since May 1, 40% of confirmed cases, versus a mere 72 Israelis who already recovered from COVID and were reinfected, only 1% of cases since May and a mere 0.0086% of the 835,792 Israelis known to have recovered from the virus. Recovered COVID patients apparently enjoy protection from reinfection over a long period of time versus those who are vaccinated, whose protection seems to lessen as time goes on.