Israel is storming ahead of all other countries in its effort to vaccinate the population against the deadly Covid-19, and has now marked its 1 millionth vaccine being successfully delivered. This 1 million figure accounts for over 10% of Israel's total population and includes healthcare workers, the medically vulnerable and 41% of all those aged over 60. Israel hopes to vaccinate a total of 2.25 million citizens by the end of January.
The 10%+ vaccination figure is far in excess of the countries in second and third place, the 2nd being Bahrain which has vaccinated almost 4% of their population, and the UK in third, which has vaccinated around 1.5% of its population.
Israel leader Benjamin Netanyahu, who was visiting an Arab town in order to promote the vaccine, said:
"We are breaking all of the records. We brought millions of vaccines to the State of Israel. We are ahead of the entire world… with our excellent HMOs. It's important for me that the Arab public in Israel will get vaccinated quickly. It's saving lives."
It has been a fear of the Israeli government that Arabs, who make up 20% of the Israeli population, are hesitant to accept the vaccine given their widespread distrust and fear of the Israeli authorities.
Israeli Health Minister, Yuli Edelstein, added on Friday:
"Yesterday we broke a new record and vaccinated 153,430 people. Today we'll pass one million."
There have been some worries that Israel's vaccination program is so fast that they will soon run out of their initial batch of vaccines and will have to put the program on hold. However, a large number of vaccines from Moderna totalling 1 million doses are due to arrive in the country early next week. This batch of Moderna vaccine doses was not mean to arrive in the country until March but has been pushed forward at the behest of the Israeli authorities.
Currently, the Israeli vaccine program has been using the Pfizer vaccine which is administered in 2 doses 3 weeks apart and is said to have a 95% efficacy rate after both doses. 95% efficacy means that 19 out of 20 people who are vaccinated and then exposed to the Covid-19 virus will not become ill. Such an efficacy is regarded as being extremely high, the annual flu vaccine only has an efficacy of around 50 to 60%.
Israel has had over 400,000 confirmed cases of Covid-19 and over 3,300 deaths since the pandemic began.
The UK, which is currently experiencing perhaps the worst Covid-19 outbreak in the world, has decided to deliver the second dose of each vaccine 12 weeks apart instead of 3 weeks apart, in order to deliver a single dose to an initially larger number of people. However, Pfizer has spoken out against this move, stating that there is no evidence to suggest that the vaccine will work effectively or as intended by allowing such a large gap between doses. The UK will also be rolling out the Oxford AstraZeneca vaccine on Monday. The vaccine is far easier to transport and administer compared to the Pfizer vaccine, which must be kept at extremely low temperatures.
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