Professor Ash, overall responsibility for dealing with Corona in Israel
After a long period in which we experienced a significant and steady decline in the spreading of the Corona virus in Israel, and following the participation of over five million people in the very impressive inoculation campaign, we are privy here in Israel to a panic over the Indian mutation of which several isolated cases have been found in Israel.
"We still don't know much about this new mutation, but at present, we regard it with trepidation. To say that it will put us back to our former situation is to overreact with undo fear," says Professor Ash to Yated Ne'eman, explaining, "A variant is a virus whose genetic makeup includes many mutations in different places which eventually cause its proteins to look different than the original. Each virus which spreads creates thousands of dissimilar variants which don't interest us.
"A `significant' virus from our viewpoint is one that has a different medical behavior: either it is contagious and spreads very rapidly or causes severe illness, or alternately, it is impervious to a vaccine. At the present, there are several variants which interest us: the British, South African, Californian, New York, Brazilian and now, the Indian, which behave somewhat differently, or that there is fear that they will act differently."
