Israel sticks with 4th vaccine shot, sees Omicron wave waning next week - Reuters

JERUSALEM, Jan 18 (Reuters) - Israel will continue to offer a fourth COVID-19 vaccine shot despite preliminary findings that it is not enough to prevent Omicron infections, the Health Ministry said on Tuesday, predicting contagions stoked by the variant will wane in a week.

"In another week we will begin seeing a drop in the numbers, but we still have two or three difficult weeks ahead," he said, adding that some Health Ministry computers had been overloaded by the volume of testing data since Sunday, disrupting updates.

Briefing the World Economic Forum in Davos, Bennett said Israel was testing as many as 5% of its 9.4 million population for COVID-19 each day, "and that's why the case numbers are so high, not because necessarily so many people are infected".