The State of Israel may soon restrict travel within the country only to people who have received two vaccines and a booster shot, as deaths and infection rates amongst the fully-vaccinated increase.
On Tuesday, Israeli Health Minister Nitzan Horowitz said the country’s Green Passport, which allows access to services and places within Israeli territories, could soon only be granted to Israelis who’ve been triple-vaccinated.
“After about half a year, you have to get a third dose. Otherwise, the vaccine loses its power,” Horowitz told Channel 13 News.
“The Green Pass testifies that a person is safe in a certain way…So the moment we know that the vaccine loses its effectiveness after a certain period, there’s no justification for giving a green pass to someone who hasn’t gotten another dose.”
Horowitz noted the new restriction would likely not be implemented until vaccines become available to everyone 12 and up, which The Daily Beast reports could happen by the end of the month.
As of this week, all Israelis over 30 will be eligible to receive booster shots. By the end of the month, they are expected to be universally available to anyone over the age of 12 who received their second vaccine five months or more ago.
Israel will then reconfigure its Green Passports, granting them only to the triple-vaccinated, and limiting their validity to six months. In anticipation of this change, the number of unvaccinated Israelis getting their first shots has tripled since the beginning of August.
News of the looming restrictions come as the country struggles to understand yet another Covid outbreak causing hospitalizations and deaths among the double-vaccinated.
More from the Daily Beast:
Israel vaccinated its population almost exclusively with the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine, which received full FDA approval on Monday and remains the gold standard for the prevention of severe illness due to the coronavirus.
But in early July, with citizens over the age of 60 almost completely vaccinated, Israeli scientists began observing a worrisome rise in infections—if not in severe illness and death—among the double-vaccinated.
Fully vaccinated people with weakened immune systems appeared particularly vulnerable to the aggressive Delta variant.
One doctor appearing on News Israel 13 earlier this month cautioned that 95 percent of patients experiencing severe illness were fully-vaccinated.
"95% of the severe patients are vaccinated".
— Ran Israeli (@RanIsraeli) August 5, 2021
"85-90% of the hospitalizations are in Fully vaccinated people."
"We are opening more and more COVID wards."
"The effectiveness of the vaccine is waning/fading out"
(Dr. Kobi Haviv, earlier today on Chanel 13 @newsisrael13 ) pic.twitter.com/SpLZewiRpQ
“Most of the population is vaccinated, and 90%… 85%-90% of the hospitalizations here are ‘Fully vaccinated’ people,” revealed Israeli Dr. Kobi Haviv.
The news also comes as the country has witnessed a surge in reports of cardiac arrest and heart issues among young people, severe adverse reactions which have been tied to the experimental mRNA jabs.