Almost 2 million people in Israel have been vaccinated.
Image Credit: Yonatan Sindel/Flash90
Israel managed to vaccinate around 1,817,000 people since the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine arrived in the country. This is around 19% of the country’s population, an impressive pace in its vaccination programme. Israel is being considered as a model coronavirus country, where it has ranked first in the world by the percentage of the population that got vaccinated. United Arab Emirates and Bahrain ranked second and third in the vaccination race, where they managed to vaccinate 9.5% and 4.5% of their population respectively.
The people who got their first dose will soon receive their second dose, and the impact of the vaccine is expected to be seen after 10 days. The number of doses the country has is being kept secret, and it is stopping vaccinating new patients to have enough doses to vaccinate the vulnerable people three weeks after their initial dose.
Despite of its success in vaccinating a huge number of people, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, ordered a third lockdown after cases have spiked, and today the number of serious cases surpassed 1000 for the first time. Israel has also reported thousands of cases evey day in December and January forcing the Prime Minister to impose another lockdown. Nearly 3,600 people have died due to the virus since the pandemic began in Israel.
Israel’s vaccination success is being attributed to its small size, its highly digitized health service and a population that got used to crises. Israel’s military and health services has carried a number of military exercises where they work together to combat a mock chemical and biological attack on the country. Daniel Landsberger, the chief physician at Maccabi Health Services said,
We’ve been practising for quite a few years for this episode. Over time, every health office has practised for this.
Dr. Landsberger
The country is used to wars and times of crises, and these experiences, has helped the country to mobilize as fast as possible to give the vaccine as if it is in war.
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