A group of Israeli doctors and scientists are calling on the Health Ministry to cancel the requirement to have three doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID vaccine in order to gain entry to a wide variety of public venues, according to a report by Channel 12 Sunday afternoon.
Roughly one hundred doctors and scientists signed onto a letter addressed to Health Minister Nitzan Horowitz (Meretz), demanding that the Ministry nix the requirement for a COVID booster shot in order to secure a ‘Green Pass’, enabling the holder to enter a wide variety of public venues.
Teachers are also set to be required to have a third dose of the vaccine when schools restart at the end of the month.
Last month, the Health Ministry announced that it was altering the Green Pass system, capping passes issued after two doses to just six months after the second shot, and requiring a third dose in order to extend the passes.
The signatories to the letter addressed to Minister Horowitz argued, however, that in light of the US FDA’s decision to bar COVID booster shots for Americans under the age of 65, the Green Pass system should not be limited to Israelis who have received three doses of the vaccine.
If the Ministry refuses to change its policy, the doctors and scientists added, they plan to petition the Supreme Court to challenge the policy.
“As you no doubt know, the decision by experts at the American FDA was to permit booster shots only for people over 65 and people in high-risk groups,” the signatories wrote.
“That means that the Israeli government will strip its citizens ages 16 through 65 of a wide range of basic legal rights including the freedom of movement, freedom to work, and more – and all this when the experts at the FDA say that it [the booster shot] is not justified medically.”
“The decision to strip people who did not receive a booster shot of their Green Pass was not a medical decision but rather a political one, and an extremely unreasonable one at that.”
Source: Arutz Sheva