TEL AVIV – Israel offers to be the first nation out of the Covid-19 pandemic by vaccinating the majority of its population in an effort to return to normalcy.
The country is currently leading the global vaccination: within two weeks, it has given more than ten percent of its 9 million citizens a vaccination dose.
According to Our World in Data, this is a significantly higher percentage than any other country, a collaboration between researchers at the University of Oxford and the non-profit Global Change Data Lab.
Israel vaccinated more than 150,000 people for three consecutive days last week, and on Friday the millionth person was injected with a dose of Pfizer-BioNTech. The country has now vaccinated more than half of the 2 million people at risk, which it considers a high protection priority.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who on December 19 became the first person in Israel to receive a shot, described the Middle East country as the ‘champion in vaccines’ and said it was ahead of the world.
“Perhaps we will be the first country in the world to emerge from this coronavirus, and that is very good news for all of us,” the longtime Israeli leader said on Tuesday and wanted to reinforce the positive message in a country that goes to a country. was brought. stagnated by the coronavirus.
Boaz Lev, head of the Israeli Ministry of Health’s advisory committee on coronavirus vaccines, blames the country’s success on its highly organized healthcare system, early contracts with vaccine manufacturers and government efforts to combat misinformation against vaccination.
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According to the ministry, Israel has also managed to pack vaccines so that they can be transported to small and remote places such as old age homes, rather than requiring people to travel to a limited number of vaccination centers.
“I really hope we will be the first country to be vaccinated. “I hope the whole world will come,” Lev told NBC News. “And it’s not a race against other countries. It’s a race against the virus, so in this race everyone wants to win, and I really hope we’ll be there as soon as possible. ”
Meanwhile, about 700 reserve soldiers are being called in to help accelerate the rate of vaccination, while the Israeli military is among the first in the world to start vaccinating its service members, according to an Israeli army spokesman.
The country’s rapid success is also likely due in part to the number of vaccines it has managed to obtain compared to the population, which was apparently mediated in part by Netanyahu.
“I have spoken to the CEO of Pfizer 13 times and to the CEO of Moderna several times,” he said in a speech on Thursday.
“We have brought millions of vaccines here, more than any other country in the world in terms of population,” he added. ‘And we brought it to all: Jews and Arabs, religious and secular. Everyone can and should be vaccinated. ”
And there is still a long way to go. Israel recorded 3,977 new positive Covid-19 cases on Sunday, and the country has yet to administer the second dose of Pfizer – needed to secure immunity – to all 1 million people who have been shot so far.
Nevertheless, Israel is far ahead, as countries scramble to pick up limited supplies of vaccines and vaccinate their populations. Countries around the world may look in admiration – and envy.
In the United States, officials have struggled with the explosion of vaccines, blaming everything from snowstorms and the holidays to storage challenges and general inexperience. Analysis by NBC News on Tuesday found that at the current rate, it would take nearly ten years to vaccinate enough Americans to get the pandemic under control.
However, Israel, which is a fraction of the size of the United States, may find it easier to vaccinate its population than the United States, one of the largest countries in the world with more than 330 million people.
Countries with low and middle incomes were also disadvantaged. COVAX, an initiative linked to the World Health Organization to ensure equitable access to vaccines for all countries, regardless of their income, said last month that it plans to give the 190 participating countries access to doses in the first half of 2021.
For example, Israeli Palestinian neighbors currently do not have access to a vaccine, which means that Israelis may be able to return to normal life, even if the virus is still a few kilometers from Palestinian towns and villages.
Palestinian Authority Health Minister Mai Alkaila said Monday that health care agencies in the area “are concerned about the low vaccination rate in Arab society.”
Palestinians living under Israeli control in the occupied West Bank and Gaza are not included in the vaccinations, causing criticism that Israel is not fulfilling its legal obligations.
The ambitious vaccination is likely to boost Netanyahu ahead of Israel’s fourth election in less than two years by the end of March. The vote is an unprecedented threat to the prime minister’s long-standing power and comes as a result of Netanyahu’s corruption trial in February.
Israel’s longest-serving prime minister is charged with fraud, breach of trust and accepting bribes in three long-running corruption cases.
Lawahez Jabari contributed.