TEL AVIV: Israel has inoculated nearly half of its most at-risk citizens and more than 10 percent of the population in two weeks as authorities speed up the Covid-19 vaccine after the first hiccup sparked shootings.
The small country, with about nine million people, about the same as New York City, now aims to immunize most of its people in early spring. Israel’s vaccination campaign is relatively straightforward compared to the mass mobilizations needed by countries with much more people and a wide geographical spread.
Israel began vaccinating its health workers and those over 60 on Dec. 20 after receiving early shipments of the Pfizer Inc. vaccine. On Saturday he had administered 12.59 doses per 100 people, according to the Oxford University-based research group Our World In Data. This inoculation rate is almost four times faster than the second fastest nation, the small state of the Arabian Gulf of Bahrain.
“The health care system is being demonstrated,” Health Minister Yuli Edelstein said in an interview Thursday with The Wall Street Journal. Israel has a technologically advanced health care system to which everyone in the country is registered by law.
The launch provides information on how authorities are trying to maximize campaign coverage for the most vulnerable, while minimizing dose waste, which must be kept extraordinarily cold to prevent them from going wrong.
After Israel was forced to release hundreds of doses as fewer inoculations than expected were inoculated, authorities reduced the number of vials sent to vaccination centers and allowed everyone to would be willing to shoot in the tail. These steps allowed Israel to quickly reduce waste and reach more people, officials say.
The Pfizer vaccine, made with partner BioNTech SE,
It should be administered within a five-day window after it leaves the main storage center and six hours once out of the refrigerator, according to Israeli authorities, who say they are following Pfizer regulations.
To cope with this short shelf life and help authorities reach less populated and isolated areas, Israel began splitting some of Pfizer’s 1,000-dose packages into smaller shipments of a few hundred each. Pfizer approved the system, in which workers repackaged vials at workstations inside bulk freezers, before implementing it, Edelstein said.
Israel also enacted a policy that allows vaccination centers facing an unused surplus to inoculate anyone who shows up. This has led to scenarios around the country of citizens, young and middle-aged, queuing at vaccination centers, hoping to receive an early shot.
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But in doing so, Israel also runs the risk of depleting the current supply of vaccines before completely inoculating the most vulnerable. Israel has bought 8 million doses from Pfizer, 6 million from Moderna and 10 million from AstraZeneca,
but it is not clear when the shipments will arrive. Vaccine manufacturers say it takes two doses to be completely effective.
Authorities in mid-January will also stop vaccinating new patients for a two-week period. The current plan is for vaccinated people to start receiving the second dose during this break.
The Israeli Minister of Health defended the current plan as a balance between the needs of those most at risk and the rest of the country.
“I don’t think it’s the right decision … to administer the vaccine only to those who are eligible (for example, 1,000 vaccines a day with zero errors)[but] then vaccinate the country in a year, “Edelstein said.” In the meantime, we would have people who would die just because they didn’t get the vaccine in time. “
Israel is currently in the middle of its third national closure to contain a resurgence in the Covid-19 cases, one of which health officials say does not work because there are too many exceptions.
The decision to impose the blockade in late December came when new reported daily rates of infection in Israel reached more than 3,000. They now average more than 5,000 daily, with a total of 50,299 active cases.
In all, 3,391 Israelis have died from the virus, with a mortality rate of 0.8%. The death toll has risen steadily since early December.
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