The Mea Shearim-based Chareidi home hospitalization organization Chasdei Amram that provides medical treatment for coronavirus patients at home, is facing a dire crisis due to a severe shortage of doctors, Yisrael Hayom reported. The organization has made an urgent appeal to the Health Ministry to allow them to bring in doctors from other countries, funded by anonymous donors. However, at least at the moment, it appears that the plan will not come to fruition due to the opposition of an anti-piracy medical group. The infection rate in Jerusalem is rising, especially in the Chareidi sector, with about 1,000 new virus patients every day – half of them from the Chareidi sector. “The situation is catastrophic,” one of the organization’s representatives told Yisrael Hayom.

The push to inoculate Americans against the coronavirus is hitting a roadblock: A number of states are reporting they are running out of vaccine, and tens of thousands of people who managed to get appointments for a first dose are seeing them canceled. The full explanation for the apparent mismatch between supply and demand was unclear, but last week the U.S. Health and Human Services Department suggested that states had unrealistic expectations for how much vaccine was on the way. The shortages are coming as states dramatically ramp up their vaccination drives, at the direction of the federal government, to reach people 65 and older, along with other groups deemed essential or at high risk. More than 400,000 deaths in the U.S. have been blamed on the virus.

A senior Israeli health official said on Wednesday that following a surge of virus cases among children, vaccinating them must be a priority in order to reach herd immunity, Ynet reported. Health officials say that the highly infectious British and South African variants are behind the increased morbidity rate in children and teenagers. Furthermore, although most children are asymptomatic or have only mild symptoms, there has been a rise in young seriously ill patients. The rapid spread of the new variants among children is a worldwide phenomenon. German Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Tuesday that new variants “spread faster among children rather than the elderly.” “We noticed increased infection among children,” said Dr.

A panel of experts commissioned by the World Health Organization has criticized China and other countries for not moving to stem the initial outbreak of the coronavirus earlier and questioned whether the U.N. health agency should have labeled it a pandemic sooner. In a report issued to the media Monday, the panel led by former Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf and former New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark said there were “lost opportunities” to set up basic public health measures as early as possible. “What is clear to the panel is that public health measures could have been applied more forcefully by local and national health authorities in China in January,” shortly after the coronavirus began sickening clusters of people, it said.

Masks off the minute you step inside. Bars packed and pulsing like it’s 2019. Social media stars waving bottles of champagne. DJs spinning party tunes through multi-hour brunches. Since becoming one of the world’s first destinations to open up for tourism, Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates, has promoted itself as the ideal pandemic vacation spot. It cannot afford otherwise, analysts say, as the virus shakes the foundations of the city-state’s economy. With its cavernous malls, frenetic construction and legions of foreign workers, Dubai was built on the promise of globalization, drawing largely from the aviation, hospitality and retail sectors — all hard hit by the virus. Now reality is catching up to the big-dreaming emirate.

The World Health Organization chief on Monday lambasted drugmakers’ profits and vaccine inequalities, saying it’s “not right” that younger, healthier adults in wealthy countries get vaccinated against COVID-19 before older people or health care workers in poorer countries and charging that most vaccine makers have targeted locations where “profits are highest.” Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus kicked off the WHO’s week-long executive board meeting — virtually from its headquarters in Geneva — by lamenting that one poor country received a mere 25 vaccine doses while over 39 million doses have been administered in nearly 50 richer nations. “Just 25 doses have been given in one lowest income country — not 25 million, not 25,000 — just 25.

Israel’s hospitals are overwhelmed with a soaring number of seriously ill coronavirus patients and hospital officials say that they are running out of ICU beds. The sad incident on Friday when a coronavirus patient died after overworked medical staff failed to notice that his ventilator had malfunctioned will likely not be an isolated incident, hospital directors say. “If until now we thought that we’ll manage to handle [this wave], even the most optimistic among us are skeptical now,” a senior doctor in one of Israel’s hospitals told B’Chadrei Chareidim. “It’s hitting us in waves – for every patient you release, another three are hospitalized. And for every three virus patients, you know that there’s a strong possibility that one of them will leave in a coffin.

Doctors at Hadassah Ein Kerem Medical Center in Jerusalem performed an emergency C- section on a pregnant woman ill with the coronavirus, delivering the baby in critical condition. Sadly, the baby died two days later, on Motzei Shabbos, Kan News reported on Sunday night. The woman, in her ninth month of pregnancy, noticed a lack of fetal movement late last week. She arrived at the hospital and was attached to a fetal monitor and an obstetrician performed an ultrasound. Forty minutes after her arrival at the hospital, doctors began the emergency operation. According to a medical expert quoted by Kan, a 40-minute wait for the C-section was excessive.

Israel’s Health Ministry on Sunday published the full data-sharing deal it signed with Pfizer in response to criticism of the deal due to privacy concerns. Israel struck a deal with Pfizer, promising to share vast troves of medical data with the international drug giant in exchange for the continued flow of its hard-to-get vaccine. The agreement, called “The Real World Epidemiological Evidence Collaboration Agreement,” can be seen here. Proponents say the deal could allow Israel to become the first country to vaccinate most of its population, while providing valuable research that could help the rest of the world. But critics say the deal raises possible privacy violations.

Sheba Medical Center in Ramat Gan reported on the results of a serological study which showed that 98% of their medical staff who received the second dose of the Pfizer coronavirus vaccine developed a high level of antibodies. The study, which was conducted a week after Israel began administering the second dose of the Pfizer vaccine, showed that most recipients had a higher level of antibodies against the coronavirus than those who recovered from a serious case of the virus, with levels 6 to 20 times higher than after the administration of the first dose. According to Dr.