The Israeli parliament on Wednesday passed a law allowing the government to share the identities of people who have not been vaccinated against the coronavirus with other authorities.
The measure, which was approved by 30 votes to 13, gives local governments, the director-general of the Ministry of Education and some in the Ministry of Welfare the right to receive the names, addresses and telephone numbers of non-vaccinated citizens. .
The purpose of the measure – which is valid for three months or until the Covid-19 pandemic is over – is to enable these bodies to vaccinate people by addressing them in person, a statement from parliament said.
Israel, a country of nine million people, has administered about two-thirds of the Pfizer / BioNTech vaccine against the coronavirus to about a third of its population.
As can be seen from the closure, the country restricts certain services, including access to gyms and indoor eateries, to only the vaccinated, which gives a so-called green fit to the fully vaccinated.
It also expressed concern about unequal access for those exercising their right not to be vaccinated.
During debate on the measure, Labor leader Merav Michaeli accused right-wing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of “denying citizens their right to privacy of their medical information”.
The statement from parliament, or Knesset, said the personal information could not be used for any purpose other than vaccinating people.
“The information will be removed within 60 days,” according to the law, and “a person who has been contacted may demand that his details be removed and that he not be contacted again.”
Haim Katz of Netanyahu’s Likud party defended the law as a means of promoting vaccination.
“I was asked what about people’s privacy: is privacy more important than life itself?” Katz said in parliament, emphasizing that the information would include nothing beyond whether the person was vaccinated or not.
Netanyahu later called on Israeli citizens to be vaccinated at a news conference to “return to normal life”.
The prime minister lamented misleading news about the vaccine, saying Israel had aimed to fully vaccinate 6.2 million people before the beginning of April.
“More than a million adults have not been vaccinated yet,” he said, adding: “in the world people are waiting for vaccinations, (but) here vaccines are waiting for people”.
Israel has officially recorded more than 760,000 cases of coronavirus and more than 5,600 deaths since the beginning of the pandemic.
jjm / bs / dv / dwo