Israel has opened the Covid vaccination center in a bar and is offering a free drink to anyone who gets a bullet to encourage young people to get the vaccine.
Jenia’s gastropub at Tel Aviv, which has been closed for a long time during the pandemic, opened its doors to serve punters of a different kind on Thursday.
More than 43 percent of Israel’s 9million population has received at least one dose of the Pfizer vaccine, health ministers say, mostly among the elderly.
But there are fears that younger people, who are much less at risk from Covid, will not be as eager to get the jobs – leading to novel ideas to lure them in.
A bar in Tel Aviv is now offering bullets of a very different kind after they were converted to a temporary vaccination center
Young people who arrive at the vaccine at the bar receive free drink tokens that can be recovered at the bar
‘I thought it was a great opportunity to come and get the vaccine, because I didn’t have the time or ability to go elsewhere,’ said May Perez, among dozens of people who showed up for their first sight.
Israel has a reputation for running a worldwide vaccination program that has seen vaccinating a larger proportion of their population than any other country.
But uptake of the vaccine has fallen sharply in recent weeks as the outbreak spreads beyond older and vulnerable people and into groups with. lower risk.
At the same time, doctors have reported an increase in younger people ending up in hospital – most of whom have not been vaccinated.
While that is encouraging, because it means the vaccine is working, health officials say the challenge now is in convincing more people to get it.
Professor Eyal Leshem, an expert on infectious diseases at Israel’s largest hospital, Sheba, told Sky News: ‘You have to convince them.
‘You need to prepare your communication, move to work on social media, move and work with community leaders, opinion leaders, even celebrities, just making sure people understand that it’s safe and it’s extremely important that everyone will be vaccinated so that we can get back to normal life. ‘
Meanwhile, promising studies from Professor Leshem ‘s hospital suggest that a male dose of 85 per cent Pfizer vaccine is effective against coronavirus infection between two and four weeks after vaccination.
Israel has been running the fastest inoculation program in the world but it has started to slow down as the injection is offered to younger people, who are not at risk from Covid
Doctors in Israel say they are seeing more and more young people end up in hospital as the vaccine protects the elderly from serious illness.
Studies conducted in Israel suggest that Pfizer injection, which the country uses to dispense (pictured), could be up to 94 percent effective in preventing ‘disease
The study was conducted on health care workers at the hospital.
The Lancet report targeted more than 9,000 medical workers at a Sheba hospital near Tel Aviv. About 7,000 of them received the first dose, and no more were taken.
From the group, 170 were tested with Covid-19 after tests performed only on those who showed symptoms or had been in contact with coronavirus carriers.
Fifty-two of them were found to have not been vaccinated.
Comparing the two groups, Sheba’s study found that the vaccine was 47 percent effective between one and 14 days after vaccination, rising to 85 percent after 15 to 28 days.
‘What we are already seeing is a very high efficacy after two weeks, between two to four weeks after vaccination, an already high efficacy of an 85 per cent reduction in symptomatic diseases,’ said Gili Regev- Yochay, co-author of the study, a small group of journalists.
He said that despite the vaccine being ‘surprisingly effective’, scientists are still investigating whether people who are fully vaccinated can pass on the virus to others.
‘That’s the big, big question. We are working on it. This is not on this paper and I hope we have some good news soon, ‘said Regev-Yochay.
Israel has delivered a bullet of the Pfizer / BioNTech vaccine to 4.23 million residents, or 47 percent of its nine million population, 2.85 million of whom received the full course of two jobs recommended, health ministry statistics say latest shows.