Police have promised to remove some roadblocks on Sunday, the first working day of Israel’s third, tightened coronavirus lockdown to ease travel to work, while hundreds of thousands more vaccines are expected to be flown in.
Between 100,000-500,000 more doses of Pfizer’s vaccine are set to be shipped this week, according to reports, and about 10 million doses will arrive by the beginning of March.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Health Minister Yuli Edelstein received their second doses of the Pfizer vaccine against the coronavirus at the Sheba Medical Center, Tel Hashomer on Saturday night – they were there the first two Israelis to get vaccinated when the vaccination campaign began three weeks ago and were the first two to get a second dose.
“Although I’m experienced, I’m excited,” the prime minister said, noting that Israel was leading the world in the rate of vaccinations. “I am certain that all citizens of Israel who are about to receive the second dose of the vaccine are excited like me... The first huge shipment is due to arrive tomorrow and through “Operation Getting Back to Life,” we will be able to open our economy quickly, the pubs, restaurants, gyms, schools, synagogues and theaters. We will do so via the green passport; we will go into detail about this later.”
“For this to happen, I need two things from you, the citizens of Israel: to ‘Give a Shoulder’ [Give a Shoulder is the name of the vaccine campaign] to the vaccine and a shoulder to a lockdown against the mutations. We will do it together. We entered corona together and we will be the first in the world to get out of it, stronger than ever.”
The Health Ministry is expected to publish the new list of priority vaccinations. Last week, the government confirmed that teachers would be the next to receive their first doses of the coronavirus vaccine. Next, people over the age of 50 are expected to be jabbed. Officials in the Health Ministry have said that with the new doses being delivered, healthy and young Israelis should be able to receive their vaccines within the next two or three weeks.
In the first three weeks of Israel’s vaccination campaign, 1.8 million people received the first dose, Edelstein said Saturday night – 20% of the population and 70% of people who are most at risk. Edelstein said that most of the medical staff are vaccinated and many of the security forces are vaccinated.
But like the prime minister, he said that the public cooperation during this period of tightened restrictions, which went into effect on Thursday at midnight, the virus crisis would come to an end.
The Israel Police gave details over the weekend of how they would ensure this cooperation.
The police spokesperson said Friday there would be 220 roadblocks around the country as part of the tightening of lockdown restrictions that went into effect on Thursday at midnight.
On Saturday afternoon they added that there would be 25 key roadblocks set up only at 9 a.m. Sunday, which would then be removed between 3:30 p.m. and 6:00 p.m. to try to reduce traffic and allow essential workers to get back and forth to work.
The crackdown is an attempt to slow the spread of the virus, which did not decline in the lockdown’s first two weeks.
As part of the tighter restrictions, the Israel Police said that in addition to the roadblocks, they will be stepping up other enforcement efforts, including other Police Traffic Division patrol vehicles which will continue to patrol the country’s highways, regardless of the deployment of the roadblocks.
The police warned the public in advance about the inevitable traffic. “Due to the roadblocks and the strict enforcement, traffic congestion is expected in some inter-city highways. As such, the public is requested to prepare in advance and drive safely,” a police statement said.
However, it seems as if the traffic jams caused by the situation since Friday were even worse than initially expected, leading to the announcement of decreasing roadblock activity starting Sunday.
The Israel Police also announced in a statement that officers arrested four suspects who attacked police officers Saturday who were involved in enforcing the lockdown regulations in Ramle, at a grocery store that was being run in violation of the guidelines.
During the attempt to give fines for those involved, the suspects began attacking the police officers, throwing tables and chairs, as well as hurling stones at the law enforcement officers. The officers, who felt threatened, fired several shots into the air. There were no casualties but several vehicles were damaged as a result of the stone-throwing.
Between Friday and Saturday at noon, the police issued 9,178 tickets for violations of the lockdown regulations throughout the country. Most of the tickets – 7,255 – were issued for going more than 1,000 m. from a place of residence for an illegal purpose, as well as 1,358 tickets for not wearing a mask, 91 reports for breaches of the quarantine, 125 reports for various breaches of rules by businesses and 299 tickets for engaging in prohibited activities in public places.
The Health Ministry reported on Saturday evening 7,808 new coronavirus infections in the past 24 hours. According to the report, 6.5% of the tests that were conducted came out positive.
Some 51 people died over the weekend, raising the death toll to 3,633.
Maayan Jaffe-Hoffman contributed to this report.