Israeli PM Naftali Bennett urges teens to get vaccinated

Tel Aviv, June 28: Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett has urged teenagers in the country to get vaccinated against Covid-19 amid rising numbers of new cases due to a local outbreak of the Delta variant.

"Go out today and get vaccinated," Bennett said at the beginning of his weekly cabinet meeting on Sunday, referring to children older than 12 year.

The vaccination rate has tripled over the past week from about 3,000 people a day to about 10,000, Xinhua news agency quoted the Prime Minister as saying.

However, he said it was not enough.

"We now want to triple once more and reach 30,000 a day, and that is possible," he said.

Bennett also said that the government has appointed Roni Numa, a former army general, to manage the country's border crossing and prevent the entry of infected individuals.

Many of the new infection cases over the past week have been associated with people arriving from abroad.

On June 21, the Health Ministry issued a recommendation for children aged 12-15 to get the vaccine.

The country has so far administered a total 10,583,275 vaccine doses since the beginning of its mass inoculation drive, according to the World Health Organization.

Meanwhile, Israel reimposed the requirement to wear masks indoors in view of the recent resurgence.

As of Monday morning, a total of 840,522 confirmed Covid-19 cases have been reported in the country, with 6,429 deaths.