{"id":248481,"date":"2022-01-18T08:36:48","date_gmt":"2022-01-18T08:36:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=248481"},"modified":"2022-01-19T09:29:37","modified_gmt":"2022-01-19T09:29:37","slug":"government-response-to-omicron-variant-triggers-uproar-in-israel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=248481","title":{"rendered":"Government response to omicron variant triggers uproar in Israel"},"content":{"rendered":"<h1 style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>Yeni Safak \u2013 Jan 16, 2022<\/strong><\/h1>\n<p>The Israeli government\u2019s response to the omicron variant of coronavirus has triggered controversy among health officials.<\/p>\n<p>In a post published on the Ichilov Hospital&#8217;s official Facebook page, Dr. Idit Matot, chair of the Department of Anesthesiology, Intensive Care and Pain, accused Israeli health authorities of exaggerating the fear of the omicron variant.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We have seen in the past month that omicron is highly contagious but causes minimal damage,&#8221; Matot said.<\/p>\n<p>The Israeli doctor noted that the Icholov Hospital, a main hospital complex serving Tel Aviv, does not have a single omicron patient on a ventilator or extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO).<\/p>\n<p>She said the publication of the number of serious patients with coronavirus in the media was \u201cmisleading\u201d, calling for easing quarantine rules.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cPeople are forced to be imprisoned in their homes. We are in a de facto lockdown and the country is on the verge of collapse. Have we gone crazy?\u201d Matot said.<\/p>\n<p>The Israeli doctor\u2019s criticism, however, was rejected by the Health Ministry, which said its response to the omicron variant aims to protect groups at risk of infection.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe policy Prof. Matot is suggesting is liable to lead to serious harm for at-risk groups and a rise in the numerous serious patients and mortality,\u201d the ministry said in a statement.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cUnfortunately, Prof. Matot\u2019s conduct, and the language in which she chose to express herself, raise concerns that the lust for publicity sometimes overtakes responsibility,\u201d it added.<\/p>\n<p>The ministry also described the publishing of Matot\u2019s opinion on the official account of Ichilov Hospital as \u201cimproper and forbidden.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In Israel, 6.5 million have received at least one dose of the coronavirus vaccine and 4.2 million received two doses and a booster.<\/p>\n<p>Since the start of the pandemic, the country has confirmed around 1.7 million coronavirus cases and more than 8,000 deaths.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.yenisafak.com\/en\/news\/government-response-to-omicron-variant-triggers-uproar-in-israel-3587839\">Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Israeli doctors accuse the government of having exaggerated the health threat posed by omicron variant<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39262,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[105,37],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-248481","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-coronavirus","category-Israel_Anti-Semitism_Zionism_and_US-UK_allies"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/248481","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/39262"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=248481"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/248481\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":248482,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/248481\/revisions\/248482"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=248481"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=248481"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=248481"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}