Israel administered Covid-19 vaccines to teens on Saturday as it continued its vaccination, with 30 percent of the population now receiving the first dose, health officials said.
Since its enactment a month ago, more than 2.5 million of Israel’s nine million population has already been vaccinated, the health ministry said on Friday.
The expansion of the campaign to include teenagers comes days after Israel extended its third national coronavirus exclusion until the end of the month on Tuesday due to an increase in coronavirus infections.
The Ministry of Health announced on Thursday that it will allow the vaccination of high school students aged 16-18, subject to parental approval.
Or, an 18-year-old teenager receives a dose of the Pfizer-BioNtech COVID-19 coronavirus vaccine at Clalit Health Services, in Israel’s Mediterranean coastal city of Tel Aviv, January 23
The country’s largest health fund, Clalit, has been shooting teens since Saturday morning, the website said, while the three smaller funds would later launch their campaign.
Israel began administering vaccines on December 20, with health workers and quickly going to the elderly, sick and at-risk groups, constantly lowering the minimum age of those entitled to the shot.
People aged 40 and over may also receive the vaccine from Saturday.
According to the Ministry of Health, almost 2.5 million people received the first of two doses as of Friday, of which 900,000 also received the second.
Israel has given 38.8 per 100 people in the country at least one dose of the vaccine, far ahead of other countries, and some people have already received the second.
By comparison, the UK administered 8.9 first doses per 100 people, the US gave 5.8, while France gave only 1.4.
Israel is currently leading the global vaccination campaign, with nearly 39 percent of its citizens having so far had at least a single dose of a sting. By comparison, the UK administered 8.9 first doses per 100 people, the US gave 5.8, while France gave only 1.4
The country acquired a large stock of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine and promised to share the impact data quickly with the US and German manufacturers.
On Thursday, the estimated COVID-19 reproduction number in Israel fell below 1 for the first time since the country launched its vaccination campaign, the government announced.
An ‘R’ number above 1 indicates that infections will grow at an exponential rate, while less than 1 indicates that it will eventually stop.
Israel’s ‘R’ number reached 1.3 on 11 December. The following week, citizens were vaccinated. With pollution increasing, it imposed a third national exclusion on December 27 – which still applies.
“Do we see the light?” We’re seeing a knock in the blinds, ‘Deputy Health Minister Yoav Kisch told Channel 13 TV after Israel recorded an ’99’ R ‘number. “We came to a halt, but we came to a halt on high levels of disease.”
A health worker is preparing a dose of Pfizer-BioNtech COVID-19 coronavirus vaccine on January 23 at Clalit Health Services, in Israel’s Mediterranean coastal city of Tel Aviv.
He attributed the exclusion and the vaccines – which are now administered to more than a quarter of Israel’s 9 million people – but added that vaccines ‘mainly reduced serious diseases, not necessarily the number of carriers’.
The reduction would have been more important had it not been for the particularly contagious British variant of the coronavirus, Kisch said.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Tuesday that the rapid vaccination campaign “will provide us with the opportunity to overcome the coronavirus, get out of it, open up the economy and make life normal again”.
But although Israel is currently leading the global infection and death rate, as well as the number of people in hospital, there have been few signs of decline.
On Wednesday, the country recorded its highest number of Covid-19 cases and deaths in a single day, with 10,213 cases and 101 deaths – the first time Israel has seen more than 10,000 cases and 100 deaths since the start of the pandemic.
On Thursday, 1,918 out of 82,930 active cases were admitted to the hospital. Last week, the hospitalization rate was just over 1,000.
The UK’s British scientific adviser, Sir Patrick Vallance, said on Friday that it was too early to draw conclusions from Israel’s vaccination operation following the alarm that hospitalizations had not yet dropped.
Israel’s leading coronavirus medication said on Wednesday that the Pfizer vaccine was less effective than expected.
In the actual data of Israel’s world beat rollout showed that the first dose resulted in a 33 percent decrease in cases of coronavirus between 14 and 21 days later in people who got the jab.
The figure is lower than the UK regulator’s estimate, which states that it could prevent 89 per cent of recipients from developing Covid-19 symptoms.
Dr Nachman Ash, Israel’s leading coronavirus medication, said on Wednesday that the Pfizer vaccine was less effective than expected
Sir Patrick Vallance said on Friday it was too early to draw conclusions from Israel’s vaccination operation following the alarm that hospitalizations had not yet dropped
But Sir Patrick, the UK’s top scientific adviser, told the Downing Street press conference on Friday that the Israeli data was ‘very preliminary’.
He said: ‘In terms of the Israeli data, I think it was information from one of the organizations that organize health in Israel, I think there are four, and it was preliminary data that came out about the numbers.
“I think the Israeli Ministry of Health has said that they are not entirely sure that this is the final data and that they expect the consequences to increase, so I think it is very tentative.
‘This is preliminary information from a group of people, they have not been following people long enough.
“We had a conversation with the Israeli advisers yesterday and they expect to receive more information over the next few weeks.
“And I think we have to monitor it very closely, we have to constantly look at data and understand the workings of vaccines in the real world.”
Dr Nachman Ash, one of the medics leading the Covid-19 response in Israel, told local media Army Radio earlier this week: “Many people are infected between the first and second injection of the vaccine.”
It can take ten days or longer before the immunity kicks in.