Construction workers install new structures at the Democracy Monument on Feb. 7, 2021.
BANGKOK — A major renovation project is underway at the Democracy Monument, a historic landmark that has been largely sealed off from the public in recent years.
Dozens of workers could be seen laboring throughout the day and night on Sunday, laying down concrete slabs and metal structures. A senior official at the Bangkok Metropolitan Administration said the renovation is purely for aesthetic purposes, and not designed to prevent the protests that often took place in the area.
“We are making a slope to place decorative flowers on. It will look beautiful from the road,” Public Parks Office director Yongtawee Photisa said by phone Monday. “There’s no other intention. It’s not related to politics at all.”
Yongtawee said the construction is scheduled to be completed on Wednesday.
Construction workers install new structures at the Democracy Monument on Feb. 7, 2021.
“Political protesters who get permission to hold protests can still convene at the monument. There won’t be any barriers. There will still be four paths leading up to the monument through the flowers,” he said.
Among the diverse arrangement of flowers planned for the monument would be red and pink cockscombs, the park director said, adding that no damage was done to the historic site.
“We aren’t doing anything to change or damage the monument itself,” Yongtawee said. “The monument will be even more beautiful.”
Democracy Monument has been the site of many demonstrations throughout Thailand’s modern history. But plants and metal barriers were put there by the City Hall and the police in June 2018, apparently to prevent pro-democracy protesters from gathering at the monument.
During a large rally against the government in October, scores of demonstrators dismantled the obstacles around the memorial in a bid to “reclaim” the symbol of Thailand’s progress toward democratic rules.
The City Hall recaptured the area soon after, and the “garden” was back in no time.
BANGKOK — The city of Bangkok on Monday welcomed a new skytrain station on Sathorn Road – one of the “ghost stations” which have been included in the fare since 1999 but never actually built.
Saint Louis Station, named so for a Catholic church and a hospital in the area, will serve commuters traveling between Chong Nonsi and Surasak. It was originally named Suksa Witthaya, after a local school that no longer operates today.
Other prominent venues in the vicinity of BTS Saint Louis include the Myanmar Embassy, Bangrak Hospital, and the Apostolic Nunciature Embassy of the Holy See.
Saint Louis was one of the two “ghost stations” in the BTS system map, the other being the Sena Ruam station, which was meant to separate Ari from Saphan Kwai. There is no information when Sena Ruam will be built.
BTS initially insisted that its fare was calculated on distance and not number of stations, but an audit by the Office of the Ombudsman in May 2020 confirmed that commuters were indeed charged for passing through those two non-existent stations for years.
A raccoon appears on a street in Osaka's Minami area on Feb. 3, 2021. (Kyodo)
TOKYO (Kyodo) — A raccoon was spotted roaming in central Osaka past midnight earlier this month, in a rare sighting highlighting how measures against the coronavirus have left one of the country’s busiest entertainment districts deserted late at night.
The wild animal, photographed by a Kyodo News cameraman, emerged from the shadows in the early hours of Wednesday in a narrow cobbled street around Hozenji temple in Osaka’s Minami district.
A Buddhist nun flashes the three-fingered salute as protesters gather outside the Hledan Center in Yangon, Myanmar Monday, Feb. 8, 2021. (AP Photo)
YANGON, Myanmar (AP) — A protest against Myanmar’s one-week-old military government swelled rapidly Monday morning as opposition to the coup grew increasingly bold.
The protesters at a major downtown Yangon intersection chanted slogans, raised a three-finger salute and carried placards saying “Reject the military coup” and “Justice for Myanmar.” Starting with a few hundred people, the crowd exceeded a thousand by midmorning and cars passing by honked their horns in solidarity.
Some smaller groups broke off from the main protest and headed to the Sule Pagoda, a past rallying point for major protests against previous ruling juntas. Monday’s action followed a protest Sunday involving tens of thousands of people demonstrating to demand the release of deposed leader Aung San Suu Kyi and other top figures from her National League for Democracy party.
Protesters flash the three-fingered salute while holding cardboard signs as they gather outside the Hledan Center in Yangon, Myanmar on Monday, Feb. 8, 2021. (AP Photo)
The growing protests are a sharp reminder of the long and bloody struggle for democracy in a country that the military ruled directly for more than five decades before loosening its grip in 2012. Suu Kyi’s government, which won a landslide election in 2015, was the first led by civilians in decades, though its power was limited by a military-drafted constitution.
During Myanmar’s years of isolation under military rule, the golden-domed Sule Pagoda served as a rallying point for political protests calling for democracy, most notably in during a massive 1988 uprising and again during a 2007 revolt led by Buddhist monks.
The military used deadly force to end both of those uprisings, with estimates of hundreds if not thousands killed in 1988. While riot police have watched the protests this past week, soldiers have been absent and there have been no reports of clashes.
Police security fix road barricades blocking protesters in Yangon, Myanmar on Sunday, Feb. 7, 2021. (AP Photo)
Several videos posted online Sunday that were said to be from the town of Myawaddy, on Myanmar’s eastern border with Thailand, showed police shooting into the air in an evident effort to disperse a crowd. There were no signs of panic and no reports of injuries.
Showing little fear, protest crowds have grown bigger and bolder in recent days, while remaining nonviolent in support of a call by Suu Kyi’s party and its allies for civil disobedience.
An intermittent communication blockade in recent days was a stark reminder of the progress Myanmar is in danger of losing. During Myanmar’s decades of military rule, the country was internationally isolated and communication with the outside world strictly controlled.
Staff wearing medical scrubs flash the three-fingered salute outside Asia Royal Hospital as they watch protesters march in Yangon, Myanmar on Sunday, Feb. 7, 2021. (AP Photo)
The elected lawmakers of Suu Kyi’s party met in an online meeting Friday to declare themselves as the sole legitimate representatives of the people and asked for international recognition as the country’s government.
The military has accused Suu Kyi’s government of failing to act on its complaints that last November’s election was marred by fraud, though the election commission said it had found no evidence to support the claims.
Karen Burkhart holds a sign across the road from the Federal Correctional Complex in Terre Haute, Ind., to protest the scheduled execution of Lisa Montgomery, Tuesday, Jan. 12, 2021. (Joseph C. Garza/The Tribune-Star via AP)
WASHINGTON (AP) — As the Trump administration was nearing the end of an unprecedented string of executions, 70% of death row inmates were sick with COVID-19. Guards were ill. Traveling prisons staff on the execution team had the virus. So did media witnesses, who may have unknowingly infected others when they returned home because they were never told about the spreading cases.
Records obtained by The Associated Press show employees at the Indiana prison complex where the 13 executions were carried out over six months had contact with inmates and other people infected with the coronavirus, but were able to refuse testing and declined to participate in contact tracing efforts and were still permitted to return to their work assignments.
Other staff members, including those brought in to help with executions, also spread tips to their colleagues about how they could avoid quarantines and skirt public health guidance from the federal government and Indiana health officials.
The executions at the end of Donald Trump’s presidency, completed in a short window over a few weeks, likely acted as a superspreader event, according to the records reviewed by AP. It was something health experts warned could happen when the Justice Department insisted on resuming executions during a pandemic.
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It’s impossible to know precisely who introduced the infections and how they started to spread, in part because prisons officials didn’t consistently do contact tracing and haven’t been fully transparent about the number of cases. But medical experts say it’s likely the executioners and support staff, many of whom traveled from prisons in other states with their own virus outbreaks, triggered or contributed both in the Terre Haute penitentiary and beyond the prison walls.
This Aug. 28, 2020, file photo shows the federal prison complex in Terre Haute, Ind. (AP Photo/Michael Conroy, File)
Of the 47 people on death row, 33 tested positive between Dec. 16 and Dec. 20, becoming infected soon after the executions of Alfred Bourgeois on Dec. 11 and Brandon Bernard on Dec. 10, according to Colorado-based attorney Madeline Cohen, who compiled the names of those who tested positive by reaching out to other federal death row lawyers. Other lawyers, as well as activists in contact with death row inmates, also told AP they were told a large numbers of death row inmates tested positive in mid-December.
In addition, at least a dozen other people, including execution team members, media witnesses and a spiritual adviser, tested positive within the incubation period of the virus, meeting the criteria of a superspreader event, in which one or more individuals trigger an outbreak that spreads to many others outside their circle of acquaintances. The tally could be far higher, but without contact tracing it’s impossible to be sure.
Active inmate cases at the Indiana penitentiary also spiked from just three on Nov. 19 — the day Orlando Cordia Hall was put to death — to 406 on Dec. 29, which was 18 days after Bourgeois’ execution, according to Bureau of Prisons data. The data includes the inmates at the high-security penitentiary, though the Bureau of Prisons has never said whether it included death row inmates in that count.
In all, 726 of the approximately 1,200 inmates at the United States Penitentiary at Terre Haute have tested positive for COVID-19 since the start of the pandemic, according to Bureau of Prisons data. Of them, 692 have recovered.
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Advocates and lawyersfor the inmates, a Zen Buddhist priest who was a spiritual adviser for one prisoner, and even the families of some of the victims fought to delay the executions until after the pandemic. Their requests were rebuffed repeatedly and their litigation failed. And some got sick.
Witnesses, who were required to wear masks, watched from behind glass in small rooms where it often wasn’t possible to stand six feet apart. They were taken to and from the death-chamber building in vans, where proper social distancing often wasn’t possible. Passengers frequently had to wait in the vans for an hour or more, with windows rolled up and little ventilation, before being permitted to enter the execution-chamber building. And in at least one case, the witnesses were locked inside the execution chamber for more than four hours with little ventilation and no social distancing.
Prison staff told their colleagues they should first get on planes, go back to their homes and then they could take a test, according to two people familiar with the matter. If they were positive, they said, they could just quarantine and wouldn’t be stuck in Terre Haute for two weeks, said the people, who could not publicly discuss the private conversations and spoke to AP on condition of anonymity.
Following Hall’s execution in November, only six members of the execution team opted to get coronavirus tests before they left Terre Haute, the Justice Department said in a court filing. The agency said they all tested negative. But days later, eight members of the team tested positive for the virus. Five of the staff members who had tested positive were brought back to Terre Haute for more executions a few weeks later.
Yusuf Ahmed Nur, the spiritual adviser for Hall, stood just feet away inside the execution chamber when Hall was executed on Nov. 19. He tested positive for the virus days later.
Writing about the experience, Nur said he knew he would be putting himself at risk, but that Hall had asked him to be at his side when he was put to death. He, and Hall’s family, felt obliged to be there.
“I could not say no to a man who would soon be killed,” Nur wrote. “That I contracted COVID-19 in the process was collateral damage” of executions during a pandemic.
Later, two journalists tested positive for the virus after witnessing other executions in January, then had contact with activists and their own loved ones, who later tested positive as well. Despite being informed of the diagnoses, the Bureau of Prisons knowingly withheld the information from other media witnesses and decided not to initiate any contact tracing efforts.
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By mid-December, prison officials said that both Corey Johnson and Dustin Higgs were sick. They were the last two prisoners to be executed, just days before President Joe Biden took office.
Death row was put on lockdown after their results, inmates told Ashley Kincaid Eve, a lawyer and anti-death penalty activist. But even though they had also tested positive, she said Higgs and Johnson were still moved around the prison — potentially infecting guards accompanying them — so they could use phones and email to speak with their lawyers and families as their execution dates approached. Eve said prisons officials may have worried a court would delay the executions on constitutional ground if that access was denied.
In response to questions from the AP, the Bureau of Prisons said staff members who don’t experience symptoms “are clear to work” and that they have their temperatures taken and are asked about symptoms before reporting for duty. (The AP has previously reported that staff members at other prisons were cleared with normal temperatures even when thermometers showed hypothermic readings.)
The agency said it also conducts contact training in accordance with federal guidance and that “if staff are circumventing this guidance, we are not aware.”
Officials said staff members were required to participate in contact tracing “if they met the criteria for it” and agency officials couldn’t compel employees to be tested.
In this Aug. 28, 2020, file photo, a no trespassing sign is displayed outside the federal prison complex in Terre Haute, Ind. (AP Photo/Michael Conroy, File)
“We cannot force staff members to take tests, nor does the CDC recommend testing of asymptomatic individuals,” an agency spokesperson said, referring to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The union for Terre Haute employees declined to comment, saying it did not want to “get into the public fray of this whole issue.”
Elsewhere, union officials have long complained about the spread of the coronavirus through the federal prison system, as well as a lack of personal protective equipment and room to isolate infected inmates. Some of those issues have been alleviated, but containing the virus continues to be a concern at many facilities.
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No more executions have yet been scheduled under Biden. The Bureau of Prisons has repeatedly refused to say how many other people have tested positive for the coronavirus after the last several executions. And the agency would not answer questions about the specific reasoning for withholding the information from the public, instead directing the AP to file a public records request.
The Bureau of Prisons said it also “took extensive efforts to mitigate the transmission” of the virus, including limiting the number of media witnesses and adding an extra van for the witnesses to space them out.
It has argued witnesses were informed social distancing may not be possible in the execution chamber and that witnesses and others were required to wear masks and were offered additional protective equipment, like gowns and face shields. The agency also refused to answer questions about whether Director Michael Carvajal or any other senior leaders raised concerns about executing 13 people during a worldwide pandemic that has killed more than 450,000 in the U.S.
Protesters stand across Prairieton Road from the Federal Death Chamber Friday, Dec. 11, 2020 in Terre Haute, Ind. (Austen Leake/The Tribune-Star via AP)
Still, it appears their own protocols weren’t followed. After a federal judge ordered the Bureau of Prisons to ensure masks were worn during executions in January, the executioner and U.S. marshal in the death chamber removed their masks during one of the executions, appearing to violate the judge’s order. The agency argued they needed to do so to communicate clearly and that they only removed their masks for a short time and disputes that it violated the order.
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In a Nov. 24 court filing on the spread of COVID at Terre Haute, Joe Goldenson, a public health expert on the spread of disease behind bars, said hundreds of staff participated in one way or another at each execution, including around 40 people on execution teams and those on 50-person specialized security teams who traveled from other prisons nationwide. He said he had warned earlier that executions were likely to become a superspreader.
Medical and public health experts repeatedly called on the Justice Department to delay executions, arguing the setup at prisons made them especially vulnerable to outbreaks, including because social distancing was impossible and health care substandard.
“These are the type of high-risk superspreader events that the (American Medical Association) and (the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) have been warning against throughout the pandemic,” James L. Madara, the executive vice president of the AMA, wrote to the Department of Justice on Jan. 11, just before the last three federal executions were carried out.
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Tarm reported from Chicago and Sisak reported from New York.
A group of students from Uruguay pose for a souvenir picture on the Olympic Rings set outside the Olympic Stadium in Tokyo, Saturday, March 21, 2020. (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia)
TOKYO (Kyodo) — U.S. President Joe Biden said Sunday the decision on whether the Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics should go ahead this summer must be “based on science.”
The comments mark what is regarded to be the first time Biden has expressed his opinion on the issue of holding the events as the coronavirus pandemic continues across the world.
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A donation bowl with an image of deposed Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi is displayed at Mandalay Food House in Bangkok, Thailand, Friday, Feb. 5, 2021. (AP Photo/Sakchai Lalit)
BANGKOK, Thailand (AP) — As expatriates from Myanmar around the world react to the military’s lightning takeover of their homeland, one restaurant in neighboring Thailand is working a diner at a time to help support members of Bangkok’s Myanmar community who want to take action against Monday’s coup.
Instead of paying for their meals, customers at Mandalay Food House are asked to donate to a fund to support Myanmar activists in Thailand who are protesting the power seizure from the elected civilian government of Aung San Suu Kyi.
They are considering campaigning online, distributing petitions and “anything they can do lawfully from here,” said one, who asked to remain anonymous for fear of attracting the attention of Burmese or Thai security officials. Myanmar is also known as Burma.
A female diner puts money in a donation bowl with an image of deposed Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi at Mandalay Food House in Bangkok, Thailand, Friday, Feb. 5, 2021. (AP Photo/Sakchai Lalit)
Diners who learned of the fundraising activity filled the seats at lunchtime on Friday, digging into such specialties as mohinga — a rice noodle and fish soup. Some came wearing shirts or hats with symbols of Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy party.
Many also attended several small rallies in Bangkok outside the Myanmar Embassy and in front of the United Nations’ regional office.
Sai Lao Mai, the restaurant’s 28-year-old owner, said that when he woke up to news of the coup, he immediately felt he had to do “something for our country, our leader.”
Diners wearing shirts with an image of deposed Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi look at the menu of Mandalay Food House in Bangkok, Thailand, Friday, Feb. 5, 2021. (AP Photo/Sakchai Lalit)
Many of his customers feel the same way. Rain Adhikaul said he too felt the need to push back against the army.
Khine Su, another patron, donated 1,000 baht ($33), double the meal’s cost.
Sai Lao Mai said he had raised close to $2,000 in five days, a significant sum for the 3-year old restaurant that operates under time and social distancing restrictions during the COVID-19 crisis.
A large image of deposed Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi is illustrated at the façade of Mandalay Food House in Bangkok, Thailand, Friday, Feb. 5, 2021. (AP Photo/Sakchai Lalit)
Outside the establishment, the restaurateur brainstormed with some of his compatriots on what they can do next.
Before they went on their way, the group sang “Kabar Makyay Bu” (We Won’t Be Satisfied Until the End of the World) — an anthem of the country’s new nonviolent resistance movement. The song was written to inspire Myanmar’s ultimately failed 1988 uprising against military rule, and is set to the tune of “Dust in the Wind,” a 1977 song by the U.S. rock group Kansas.
In this image from video, protesters flash the three-fingered salute as they march in Yangon, Myanmar Saturday, Feb. 6, 2021. (AP Photo)
YANGON, Myanmar (AP) — Myanmar’s new military authorities appeared to have cut most access to the Internet on Saturday as they faced a rising tide of protest over their coup that toppled Aung San Suu Kyi’s elected civilian government.
Numerous internet users noted a slow disappearance of services, especially from mobile service providers, that accelerated sharply late Saturday morning. Broadband connection also later failed, while there were mixed reports on whether landline telephone service was still working.
Netblocks, a London-based service that tracks internet disruptions and shutdowns, said Saturday afternoon that “a near-total internet shutdown is now in effect” in Myanmar, with connectivity falling to just 16% of normal levels.
In this image from video, protesters flash the three-fingered salute as they march in Yangon, Myanmar Saturday, Feb. 6, 2021. (AP Photo)
The broad outage followed Friday’s government order to block Twitter and Instagram that said some people were trying to use the platforms to spread what it deemed fake news. Facebook had already been blocked earlier in the week — though not completely effectively.
The communication blockages are a stark reminder of the progress Myanmar is in danger of losing after Monday’s coup plunged the nation back under direct military rule after a nearly decade-long move toward greater openness and democracy. During Myanmar’s previous five decades of military rule, the country was internationally isolated and communication with the outside world strictly controlled.
Suu Kyi’s five years as leader since 2015 had been Myanmar’s most democratic period despite the military retaining broad powers over the government, the continued use of repressive colonial-era laws and the persecution of minority Rohingya Muslims.
In this image from video, protesters wearing hard hats flash the three-fingered salute while they march in Yangon, Myanmar Saturday, Feb. 6, 2021. (AP Photo)
The blockages are also adding greater urgency to efforts to resist the coup, with Saturday seeing some of the largest street protests against the takeover. In what appeared to be the main one, about 1,000 protesters — factory workers and students prominent among them — marched Saturday morning down a main street in Yangon, the country’s biggest city, and were met by more than 100 police in riot gear.
Members of the crowd shouted “Military dictatorship should fall” and “Down with dictatorship.” They marched with their hands in the air, formed into three-fingered salutes, a symbol of defiance adopted from protesters in neighboring Thailand, who borrowed the gesture from the “Hunger Games” movie franchise.
The demonstration ended peacefully with no clashes reported. It dispersed around the time communications were cut, and it was unclear if the marchers later regrouped.
In this image from video, a crowd of protesters march in Yangon, Myanmar Saturday, Feb. 6, 2021. (AP Photo)
Telenor Myanmar, a major mobile operator, confirmed it had received Friday’s order to block Twitter and Instagram. In a statement, Twitter said it was “deeply concerned” about the order and vowed to “advocate to end destructive government-led shutdowns.”
“It undermines the public conversation and the rights of people to make their voices heard,” its spokesperson said.
Since the coup, social media platforms have been major sources of independent news as well as organizing tools for protests.
For the fourth night Friday, those opposed to the coup and the arrests of activists and politicians that have accompanied gathered at windows and on balconies around Yangon to make a cacophony of noise in protest.
In this image from video, protesters flash the three-fingered salute as they march in Yangon, Myanmar Saturday, Feb. 6, 2021. (AP Photo)
Earlier Friday, nearly 300 elected lawmakers from Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy party declared themselves as the sole legitimate representatives of the people and asked for international recognition as the country’s government.
They were supposed to take their seats Monday in a new session of Parliament following November elections when the military announced it was taking power for a year.
The military accused Suu Kyi and her party of failing to act on its complaints that last November’s election was marred by fraud, though the election commission said it had no found no evidence to support the claims.
In New York, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres pledged Friday that the United Nations will do everything it can to unite the international community and create conditions for the military coup in Myanmar to be reversed.
In this image made from video, Myanmar police block the road to prevent protesters from marching forward Saturday, Feb. 6, 2021 in Yangon, Myanmar. (AP Photo)
He told a news conference it is “absolutely essential” to carry out the Security Council’s calls for a return to democracy, respect for the results of the November elections, and release of all people detained by the military, “which means the reversal of the coup that took place.”
Guterres said Christine Schraner Burgener, the U.N. special envoy for Myanmar, had a first contact with the military since the coup and expressed the U.N.’s strong opposition to the takeover.
According to U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric, she reiterated to Deputy Commander-in-Chief Vice Gen. Soe Win “the secretary-general’s strong condemnation of the military’s action that disrupted the democratic reforms that were taking place in the country.”
Lawyers who graduated from the Yadanabon University flash the three-fingered salute of protest in Mandalay, Myanmar Saturday, Feb. 6, 2021. (AP Photo)
In addition to 134 officials and lawmakers who were detained in the coup, some 18 independent activists were also held, said the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners in Myanmar, which added that some have been released.
On Friday, Suu Kyi’s senior aide, Win Htein, was picked up in Mayangone township. He told BBC in a phone call earlier that he was being arrested for sedition, which carries a maximum penalty of life imprisonment.
Suu Kyi and President Win Myint are also under house arrest and have been charged with minor offenses, seen by many as merely providing a legal veneer for their detention. Suu Kyi was described by her party as being in good health.
Israelis receive a Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine from medical professionals at a coronavirus vaccination center set up on a shopping mall parking lot in Givataim, Israel, during a nationwide lockdown to curb the spread of the virus, Thursday, Feb. 4, 2021. (AP Photo/Oded Balilty)
TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) — When it comes to fighting the coronavirus, Israel is discovering the limits of vaccines.
The country famous for its high-tech prowess and spirit of innovation is home to the world’s speediest vaccination drive, fueled from the top by national pride and a deep longing to start “getting back to life,”as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu put it.
But experts say reopening the country will still take months, complicated by coronavirus mutations that have spread from Britain and South Africa, a refusal among some sectors to adhere to safety rules and wobbles in the pace of vaccinations of people under 60.
While the government is expected to begin easing a third nationwide lockdown in the coming days, there are likely to be further, partial closings as the threat ebbs and flows.
“This is going to be a balancing act,” said Eyal Leshem, director of the Center for Travel Medicine and Tropical Diseases at Sheba Medical Center.
Israelis line up to receive a Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine at a coronavirus vaccination center set up at a gymnasium in Petah Tikva, Israel, during a nationwide lockdown to curb the spread of the virus, Monday, Feb. 1, 2021. (AP Photo/Oded Balilty)
In an impressive feat, more than a third of Israel’s 9.3 million people have received at least one shot in mere weeks, and over 1.9 million have gotten both doses, perhaps putting the country on track to inoculate nearly its entire adult population by the end of March.
Rights groups say Israel has the obligation as an occupying power to vaccinate Palestinians. Israel denies having such a responsibility, and says its priority is its own citizens. Nevertheless, Israel this week for the first time transferred 5,000 doses of the Moderna vaccine to the Palestinian Authority to inoculate medical workers.
In Israel, for the first time, researchers are starting to see the effects of the vaccinations, giving other nations a very early glimpse of what might lie ahead for them.
Netanyahu on Thursday said that among people over 60, the first group vaccinated, serious cases of hospitalizations have dropped 26% and confirmed infections have fallen 45% over the past 16 days.
“This is a direct result of the vaccinations,” he said. “The vaccines work.”
Thousands of ultra-Orthodox Jews participate in funeral for prominent rabbi Meshulam Soloveitchik in Jerusalem, Sunday, Jan. 31, 2021, flouting the country’s ban on large public gatherings amid the pandemic. (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit)
But other key indicators, including deaths and new infections, remain high, in part because of the fast-spreading mutations and the month-long lag time before the vaccine shows its full benefits.
Israel has been reporting some 7,000 new infections a day, one of the highest rates in the developed world. Nearly 5,000 people have died, more than a quarter of them in January alone.
Israel has certain advantages that suggest its success at vaccinations may not be easily duplicated elsewhere. It is small, with 9.3 million people. It has a centralized and digitized system of health care, delivered through just four HMOs. And its leader, Netanyahu, has made the vaccination drive a centerpiece of his bid for reelection in March, personally negotiating deals with the CEOs of Pfizer and Moderna.
Still, experts around the world are watching eagerly.
“Israel’s aggressive inoculation program demonstrates that it is indeed possible for a country to get vaccines into people’s arms quickly and efficiently,” said Jonathan Crane, a bioethicist at Emory University in Atlanta. In an email, he praised the centralized effort, compared with the “piecemeal” way vaccines in countries like the U.S. are being delivered by various jurisdictions.
Even with these early signs of success, it’s increasingly clear that there will be no pandemic day-after, a celebratory moment when people are cleared to flood back to work, hold large family gatherings or resume the social lives they once knew.
Reopening will depend on many factors, including efforts to halt the spread of the highly contagious variants and whether the public takes the proper precautions. Many Israelis were horrified this week by scenes of big ultra-Orthodox funeralsfor two revered rabbis, with most mourners mask-free.
Some parts of the population, including the Arab and ultra-Orthodox sectors and younger adults, have shown an apparent reluctance to get vaccinated, which could also hinder the effort to achieve “herd immunity” and stop the virus.
“All of Europe is waiting for the vaccines, and here people don’t want to get vaccinated?” Sara Baruch said after receiving her second dose on Wednesday in Tel Aviv. “It’s strange.”
Thousands of ultra-Orthodox Jews participate in funeral for prominent rabbi Meshulam Soloveitchik in Jerusalem, Sunday, Jan. 31, 2021, flouting the country’s ban on large public gatherings amid the pandemic. (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit)
She said it is a “big mistake” if the trend continues: “We won’t be able to go on a holiday and to go back to normal life we had before.”
The vaccination campaign has become a feature of pop culture and a point of national pride. Israelis proudly post photos on social media showing themselves getting vaccinated, and one HMO serves cappuccinos afterward so people can be monitored for side effects before they leave.
Experts have recommended a gradual reopening of the country, though political leaders will make the final decision. Closings and reopenings, experts say, will be a cost-benefit analysis that will change according to the course of the outbreak and the state of the economy.
Dr. Nadav Davidovitch, a member of a government advisory panel, said young children along with vaccinated high school students over 16 should be allowed to return to school in the first stage, and only teachers who have been inoculated should be in class. Street shops and restaurants might open for takeout only, followed in later stages by malls and cultural events opened only to people who have been vaccinated.
He said steps should be staggered every two weeks, with a constant eye on infection rates, testing and more vaccinations. Indoor and outdoor public gatherings should continue to be limited for a while, he said. Social distancing and masks will be required for the foreseeable future.
“It will be very gradual in the coming months,” said Davidovitch, director of the school of public health at Israel’s Ben-Gurion University. “Vaccinations are very important, but they are not going to solve all the problems.”
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Associated Press writers Josef Federman, Isaac Scharf and Ilan Ben Zion contributed.
