Two Brothers Die of COVID-19 Within Two Hours of Each Other
2 min read
On Wednesday evening, two brothers died of the coronavirus at the same hospital located in southern Israel within two hours of each other. 62-year-old Yitzhak ‘Jackie’ Edry and his 61-year-old brother, Nissim, passed away within hours of each other at the Soroka Medical Center located in Beersheba. It was the younger brother who first succumbed to COVID-1. According to the reports, none of the brothers had gotten even a single dose of the vaccine. Jackie had not been able to get his vaccination because of a medical condition he has. However, it was unclear as to why Nissim had not gotten his vaccine shots.
As per reports, the two brothers had gotten infected at a family event that they had attended about three weeks ago. Adele, Jackie’s daughter, posted on Facebook that rocks can be broken and the two brothers were not separated in life or in death. Jackie Edri was quite well-known for his battles on behalf of the people working at the Dead Sea Works and Israel Chemicals companies and for his social justice activism as well. He had gone on a hunger strike in 2011 for protesting against water tariffs and had eventually succeeded in getting subsidies for low-income families from the Finance Ministry.
He had also been a member of the Dimona city council from 2013 to 2018. Benny Biton, the Dimona Mayor, who is also a former classmate of Jackie’s, also made a statement. He said that Edri was a social fighter who always went against the flow. Biton said that this was very tragic for Dimona. Recently, Israel has been slowly making its way out of the fourth wave of the coronavirus, after it prioritized mass vaccinations for curbing the outbreak in most of the country. The vaccine shots have been made available to everyone aged 12 and above, including the booster shot of the Pfizer vaccine.
It is also expected that the vaccine will also be granted approval for children between the ages of 5 and 11. According to the figures published by the Health Ministry on Thursday, there were only 605 people who tested positive for the coronavirus a day before. The total number of active patients in the country was around 6,952. Out of these, the number of seriously ill patients stood at 185. Up until now, of the total 9.5 million that reside in Israel, one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine has been administered to at least 6,243,281 people.
Two shots of the Pfizer vaccine have been administered to 5,738,253 people, while the third booster shot has been given to around 3,973,121 people. As of now, Israel is having a public debate over whether the COVID-19 vaccine should be given to 5 to 11-year-old children or not. The vaccine has already received approval in the United States, with the campaign being launched today for vaccinating the 28 million children who are eligible for it. The dosage of the vaccine has been adjusted to make it appropriate for the kids.
