Wed Sep 6, 2023 – 10:47 am EDT
(LifeSiteNews) — Israel’s Health Ministry has ordered hospitals to conduct COVID tests on all new patients amid rumors of renewed lockdowns.
According to a report by the Jerusalem Post, the Health Ministry gave the order for mandatory PCR testing due to the rise in COVID-19 infection numbers and to “more effectively track the infection rates.”
Health officials are reportedly concerned about the so-called BA.2.86 or “Pirola” variant potentially spreading more quickly than they expected. The variant is supposedly “able to evade much of the immunity provided by previous infections and vaccinations.”
The Jerusalem Post cites Shay Fleishon, executive director of the government-affiliated organization BioJerusalm, who argued that the perception of the BA.2.86 variant spreading relatively slowly may be due to “low surveillance efforts worldwide and not of the variant’s lack of success.”
The author of the Jerusalem Post article, Tzvi Joffre, states that “[d]ecreased surveillance has also made it difficult to accurately judge how quickly BA.2.86 is spreading and is posing difficulties in catching future variants.”
Researcher Ben Murrell of the Swedish Karolinska Institute echoed the sentiment, stating, “The fact, however, that another Omicron-like emergence event has occurred, with
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