Israel’s first Covid-19 vaccinations were easy. Now comes the difficult part.

“I am healthy, my body knows how to overcome it,” said Tamir Hefetz, 46, one of the organizers of the anti-vaccine demonstration. “The green passport is a terrible thing.”

In the final stages of its vaccination campaign, Israel is trying to persuade resistant people to get vaccinated before new variants of the coronavirus increase infection levels again, causing further damage to the country’s economy.

But the hardened pockets of resistance that the Israeli government faces point to the struggles that await many Western countries, including the United States, once they have inoculated a large part of their populations.

“The further you go, the more difficult it becomes,” Israeli Health Minister Yuli Edelstein said in an interview. “It’s just like running a marathon.”

With more than 55% of its population receiving at least one injection – and more than 46% with two – Israel’s vaccination campaign has reached a critical stage. After peaking at more than 230,000 vaccines a day in mid-January, the vaccine’s release has slowed in recent weeks to around 100,000 a day.

Experts warn that in order for Israel to achieve any level of immunity and detection that allows repeated cycles of economic openings and blockades to escape, this pace needs to be accelerated.

Gili Regev, director of the epidemiology division at Sheba Medical Center, said that Israel will not achieve collective immunity with the British variant until 80% of the population is vaccinated, currently impossible until children under 16 can get the vaccine. Before that, she said, just inoculating as many people as possible over the age of 16 will improve the outlook.

“The more people are vaccinated, the safer it will be for everyone,” she said.

Dr. Regev estimates that only about 4% of Israelis who receive the vaccine refuse it, but there are many others who have not bothered to get the vaccine, despite individual cities establishing mobile inoculation sites and public awareness campaigns. The Israeli government has also developed an elaborate incentive system, based on green passports, which allows vaccinated people to have access to fitness options, meals and entertainment, most of which are closed during successive blockades and which are still practically closed to avoid vaccinated.

Since the start of the vaccine campaign, Israeli health maintenance organizations have targeted all those eligible with text messages, phone calls and emails to lure them to vaccination sites.

These calls still fall on deaf ears to people like Katy Drabkin of Holon, a city south of Tel Aviv. She recently rode a bicycle through a vaccination center in the city and asked several individuals in line not to have the vaccines. She does not trust the information in the mainstream media about vaccines and resents being discriminated against for refusing an injection.

“What is happening now is that our media belongs to the system, which belongs to people with personal interests,” she said. “Now, they are simply convincing everyone that there is a dangerous pandemic.”

Shiri, 45, who attended the anti-vaccine demonstration in Tel Aviv but declined to give his surname because he feared repercussions on his business, also doubts whether an injection is worthwhile. She brought her husband and three children to distribute anti-vaccine stickers to passersby.

“I’m not sure if this is safe or working,” she said, referring to the vaccine.

Israel initially did well during the first wave of the pandemic, but experienced a second paralyzing wave after reopening very quickly during the summer, which forced a second blockade. The country closed again in December, after the spread of the most contagious British strain of the virus led to a third wave that was the worst of all. So far, more than 6,000 people have died from Covid-19, and the strikes have cost the Israeli economy billions of dollars.

The pro-vaccine campaign is influencing some obstacles. Amos Yekutiel, from Jerusalem, said he had no plans to be vaccinated, but he did so after passing a vaccination site that had been set up in a neighborhood bar. His friends, warning him that he would not be able to visit him until he was vaccinated, pushed the 36-year-old consultant through the door.

“I’m not a conspiracy theorist, I just don’t think I needed it myself,” he said. Now that he has changed his mind, he is excited to go to restaurants and join a group dinner. “It gives you more freedom.”

To further influence skeptics, the Israeli health ministry also aims at misinformation about vaccines, mainly disseminated on social networks. Health officials are working with the Israeli Ministry of Justice to collect false information about vaccines and are also publishing information to debunk vaccine myths.

In Jerusalem, two religious students said that while many of their friends insisted that they not get the vaccine, they finally went ahead after asking questions to volunteer doctors and doctors about how it works and consulting their parents.

“[At first] we looked at each other and said ‘of course not’, ”said Yaakov Silverman, 21, who was eating an ice cream when a volunteer found him and his friend and suggested that he get a shot at a nearby bar. “But we asked a few questions … and we talked about it and said, ‘Why don’t we just do this?'”

—Dov Lieber in Tel Aviv contributed to this article.