Leading Israeli epidemiologist not worried about new COVID-19 variant

There is no reason to worry now about the new strain of COVID-19 called BA.2.86 that is being tracked by the US Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and the World Health Organization (WHO), says Prof. Hagai Levine, a senior epidemiologist at the Hebrew University-Hadassah Braun School of Public Health and Community Medicine and head of the Israel Association of Public Health Physicians. 

However, he told The Jerusalem Post on Friday that “there is reason to worry about the lack of lessons learned in Israel and many other countries regarding the lack of investment and preparation for a pandemic and public health emergencies, politicization and damage to trust and solidarity. The lack of food security among the poorer sectors in Israel also increases mortality from infectious and other diseases, he added. 

The CDC is tracking the new, highly-mutated COVID variety found in a few places in Israel. Officials said that “as we learn more about BA.2.86, our advice on protecting yourself from COVID-19 remains the same.” The WHO added that, so far, only a few sequences of the variant named have been reported from a handful of countries and that it viewed it as as a “variant under monitoring” due to the large number of mutations it carries.

New Zealand drops the last of its COVID restrictions

New Zealand announced this week the cancellation of the latest COVID-19 measures due to the various gaps in the policies of the various countries