Israel says it will become first nation to offer fourth coronavirus vaccine dose

Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said he ordered the government to immediately prepare for distributing fourth doses.

"As we did with the booster in the delta surge, we intend to be active and groundbreaking, and do everything to win," he tweeted. "The world will follow us."

The Health Ministry's advisory committee recommended a fourth dose to people 60 and older, those with compromised immune systems, and health-care workers. It required all eligible recipients to have gone four months since their third dose.

The Health Ministry has reported 341 confirmed, and hundreds more suspected, cases of the omicron variant as of Tuesday, citing a "fifth wave" of coronavirus infections.

News of a fourth dose comes the same day as a hospital in the country announced its first omicron-related death. Soroka Hospital, in the southern city of Beersheba, said a 65-year-old patient died after two weeks of hospitalization.

The man reportedly had a host of medical conditions that contributed to his death.

"His morbidity stemmed mainly from preexisting sicknesses and not from respiratory infection arising from the coronavirus," the hospital said in a statement.

He had received only two vaccine doses, and more than six months had elapsed since receiving the second dose, according to Israeli media outlets.

On Tuesday, Israel's coronavirus cabinet also approved new restrictions, including limits on crowd sizes in shopping centers and on in-office employees in the public sector.

Health Ministry officials have estimated that the omicron variant makes up between 10% and 15% of all coronavirus infections in Israel. They expect it to be the dominant variant in Israel within two weeks.

The ministry has said that the majority of omicron cases had come from travelers who returned from abroad. On Monday, Israel added 10 countries, including the United States and Canada, to its "red list," which also includes several European countries and almost all of Africa.

Travel from Israel to red countries is forbidden without permission from a special committee. Israeli citizens flying from a red country must enter a seven-day quarantine even if they are fully vaccinated. Entry of noncitizens has been banned since last month.

The definition for "fully vaccinated" in Israel requires travelers to be 12 years or older and have received a booster shot at least one week prior or be within six months of having received a second vaccination shot. Last month, Israel opened up vaccinations to children as young as 5.

In January, Israel launched the world's most rapid and widely reaching immunization campaign through the mobilization of its well-organized, meticulously digitized national health-care system.

Last month, Health Minister Nitzan Horowitz said Israel's decision to begin offering booster shots in July, as the delta variant was spreading across the globe but before they were authorized by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, was "justified."

Clalit, Israel's largest HMO, has found that a third shot of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine is 92% effective in preventing serious illness and 93% effective in preventing hospitalization, compared with waning protection from only two doses, according to a large-scale study published in the Lancet medical journal in October.

Out of a population of 9.3 million, 6.4 million have received their first shot, 5.8 million their second and 4.1 million their third, according to the Health Ministry.

Israel has recorded at least 8,235 coronavirus deaths since the start of the pandemic.