Nearly 380,000 Israelis were vaccinated in the first eight days of the country’s inoculation operation, Health Minister Yuli Edelstein said Monday, making Israel the country with the highest proportion of vaccine recipients per capita in the country. -world.
Around 169,000 of those received the first of two doses over the weekend.
Former Israeli receiving coronavirus vaccine at Wolfson Medical Center
(Photo: nadav abas)
The largest number of people injected with the Pfizer-BioNTech coronfirus vaccine came on Sunday, with more than 98,000 people included, Edelstein said.
The country’s stated target for daily inoculations is 150,000.
With Israel entering its third national COVID-19 lockout, and as it reads for its next round of elections in March, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced Saturday night if the country maintains the vaccine pace which currently has some 2.25 million people, or closures to 25% of the country’s 9.1 million residents, included by the end of January.
According to the prime minister, in talks with the heads of the vaccine providers, “I asked them to match the rate at which the vaccines are delivered to the speed of the inoculations, and they said that thinks they can do it. “
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu receives the coronavirus vaccine at Sheba Medical Center
(Photo: Tomer Applebaum)
Prof. Jonathan Halevy, president of Shaare Zedek Medical Center in Jerusalem, said he believes the government. “They have delivered the goods. I see no reason why we should not reach this number, ”he said.
“It’s a game change. I don’t know if we reach 150,000 every day, but 100,000 will easily reach us. I see 2 million people circulating in January, ”he said.
“If we get vaccinated 2 million people a month and there are already about 1 million Israelis – although statistics say about 400,000 – who have or have had a coronavirus, we are in a good shape to protect the herd reach for the population, which I would say is somewhere in the 60% -70% range, ”said Halevy.