Israel has said it is confident that vaccines are effective against the UK strain of coronavirus, but dampened hopes of a swift reopening of schools as it warned that young children were particularly susceptible to the new variant.
“The vaccine works against the British mutation but the virus infection rate is much faster than the vaccine rate,” said Dr Sharon Alroy-Preis, the Israeli government’s public health chief.
Israeli officials have warned that as much as 70 per cent of new coronavirus cases in the country may have been caused by the UK strain, and that children are more likely to catch it than first expected.
“Forty per cent of illness is in children, a higher percentage than their part in the population,” Dr Alroy-Preis told Israeli reporters on Monday
