Slow off the blocks in the race to immunize its citizens against COVID-19, Germany faces an unfamiliar problem: a glut of vaccines and not enough arms to inject them into. Like other countries in the European Union, its national vaccine campaign lags far behind that of Israel, Britain and the United States. On Wednesday the government gave in to growing calls in this country of 83 million to ditch the rulebook that many have blamed for holding Germany back. “We want to use all flexibility,” Chancellor Angela Merkel said after lengthy negotiations with state governors in Berlin on adjusting pandemic measures.

Israel’s death rate rose by about 10% in 2020, according to a report published on Monday. The report by the Taub Center for Social Policy Studies stated that “although this is a significant increase, it is lower than the increase in other countries,” and lower than could have been predicted to result from the pandemic on the Israeli population. At the beginning of 2020, before the pandemic hit Israel, Israel’s death rate was at a record-low level, the report said.

Dr. Sharon Alroy-Preis, the head of the Health Ministry’s Public Health division, told the coronavirus cabinet on Tuesday ahead of the decision to reopen Ben-Gurion Airport, that opening Israel’s borders without restraint could lead to catastrophe by allowing in multiple coronavirus variants. “We are seeing a lot of variants out there, not just from New York,” she said. “We need to ensure that we don’t find ourselves in a catastrophe within a month and then ask ourselves why we allowed people with variants in.

The Palestinian Authority’s decision to divert some of its stockpile of coronavirus vaccines to senior officials, soccer players and others has sparked controversy, feeding into long-standing concerns about corruption as it struggles to respond to a worsening outbreak. The PA has repeatedly said that its first vaccines would go to medical workers and elderly patients, who are at greatest risk of severe illness or death. But to date it has only acquired enough doses to inoculate 6,000 people in a population of nearly 5 million. “We have focused from the beginning on health workers, but there are around 100,000” in the occupied West Bank and Gaza, Health Minister Mai Alkaila told reporters on Tuesday.

Austria and Denmark have further dented the European Union’s already fragile coronavirus vaccine solidarity by announcing plans to team up with Israel to produce second-generation vaccines against COVID-19 variants. Chancellor Sebastian Kurz plans to visit Israel with Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen later this week and confer with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on vaccine research and production cooperation. Kurz said Tuesday that his country and Denmark intend to stop relying solely on the European Union for coronavirus vaccines. As part of its strategy, the EU has six contracts for more than 2 billion doses of vaccines, with Moderna, AstraZeneca, Sanofi-GSK, Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer-BioNTech and CureVac.

Israel may need to enter a fourth lockdown ahead of the March 23 election, coronavirus czar Prof. Nachman Ash said in an interview with Radio 103FM on Wednesday morning on the background of a worrying rise in Israel’s basic reproduction number [how many people each carrier infects]. “We’ll have to see the data in the next couple of weeks,” he said. “It’s definitely a possibility that we will recommend a fourth lockdown before the election.” Israel has begun reopening its economy, with further restrictions scheduled to be lifted on Sunday. And while the infection rate and the number of seriously ill virus patients on Wednesday were the lowest since December, the basic reproduction or R number has increased to 1.

Israel’s Health Ministry stated on Tuesday that it has discovered three cases of the New York coronavirus variant in Israel. Health Ministry officials believe that the three carriers, members of the same family, were in contact with someone who recently returned to Israel from New York. The family members, who live in Jerusalem, are reportedly not cooperating with the Health Ministry’s epidemiological investigators, but according to information officials received from a third party, it’s possible that others were infected as well and the variant is already silently spreading in Israel.

About 88% of Israelis over the age of 50 have either been vaccinated against the coronavirus or have recovered from the virus, according to Health Ministry data published on Wednesday. A total of 4.8 million Israelis, 52% of the population, have been vaccinated with one vaccine dose, and 3.5 million Israelis have received both doses. Israel’s Arab sector has the lowest vaccination rate, with only 67% of those over 50 vaccinated and 31% of those of all ages. At the same time, the reproduction number in the sector is currently the highest in the country, standing at 1.17. The reproduction number in the Chareidi sector is currently 0.82, significantly lower than that of the general population, which is currently at 1. (YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem)

The variant of the coronavirus discovered in Britain is prevalent among Italy’s infected schoolchildren and is helping to fuel a “robust” uptick in the curve of COVID-19 contagion in the country, the health minister said Tuesday. Roberto Speranza told reporters that the variant, associated with higher transmission rates, has shown pervasiveness “among the youngest age group” of the population. In recent weeks, Italy’s incidence of new cases among young people has now eclipsed incidence among the older population, a reversal of how COVID-19 afflicted residents in the first months of the pandemic. Italy, a nation of 60 million people where COVID-19 first erupted in the West in February 2020, has registered nearly 3 million confirmed cases.

Dr. Sharon Alroy-Preis, the head of the Health Ministry’s Public Health division, warned government ministers on Monday of the worrying increase of coronavirus cases in children under the age of nine, Ynet reported on Tuesday. Dr. Preis presented a graph showing an increase in the number of cases in children under nine versus other age groups, in which cases decreased or at least remained steady. There has been a sharp increase in the infection rate in children under nine from January until February. According to Health Ministry data, 11.2% of virus cases were found in children under the age of nine – or 1 our of 9 cases – at the end of January. In February, 19.7% of cases were found in children under the age of nine – or 1 out of 5 cases.