TEL AVIV – Israel is applying to be the first nation to emerge from the Covid-19 pandemic, vaccinating the majority of its population in an attempt to return to normalcy.
The country is currently leading the world charge of inoculation: it administered a dose of vaccination to more than 10% of its 9 million citizens in two weeks.
This represents a significantly higher proportion than any other nation, according to Our World in Data, a collaboration between researchers at Oxford University and the non-profit laboratory Global Change Data Lab.
Israel vaccinated more than 150,000 people on three consecutive days last week, and on Friday, the millionth person received a dose of Pfizer-BioNTech. The country has already vaccinated more than half of the 2 million people at risk that it considers a high priority for protection.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who on December 19 became the first person in Israel to receive an injection, described the Middle East country as the “vaccine champion” and said he was “ahead” of the world.
“We may be the first country in the world to emerge from this coronavirus, and this is great news for all of us,” said the former Israeli leader on Tuesday, eager to spread the positive message in a country that was brought to a standstill by coronavirus.
Boaz Lev, head of the Israeli Ministry of Health’s advisory committee on coronavirus vaccines, attributes the country’s success to its highly organized health system, early contracts with vaccine manufacturers and government efforts to combat anti-vaccination misinformation, among other factors.
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Israel has also managed to repackage the vaccines, allowing them to be transported to small and remote places, such as nursing homes, instead of requiring people to travel to a limited number of vaccine centers, according to the ministry.
“I really hope that we are the first country to be vaccinated. I hope the whole world is coming, ”Lev told NBC News. “And it is not a race against other countries. It is a race against the virus, so in this race everyone wants to win and I really hope we are there as soon as possible. “
Meanwhile, some 700 reserve soldiers are being called on to help accelerate the pace of the vaccination campaign, while the Israeli military is among the first in the world to start vaccinating its military, according to a spokesman for the Defense of Israel.
The country’s rapid success is also partly due to the number of vaccines it has managed to acquire compared to its population, businesses apparently brokered in part by Netanyahu himself.
“I spoke 13 times with the CEO of Pfizer and several times with the CEO of Moderna,” he said in a speech on Thursday.
“We brought millions of vaccines here, more than any other country in the world in terms of population,” he added. “And we take them all: Jews and Arabs, religious and secular. Everyone can and should be vaccinated. “
And there is still a long way to go. Israel registered 3,977 new positive cases of Covid-19 on Sunday, and the country has yet to administer the second dose of Pfizer – which is needed to guarantee immunity – to all 1 million people who have received the vaccine so far.
However, Israel is well ahead of the curve, as countries struggle to grab limited supplies of vaccines and inoculate their populations. Countries around the world may be looking with awe – and envy.
In the United States, authorities have struggled with the vaccine launch, blaming everything from snowstorms and holidays to storage challenges and general inexperience. An analysis by NBC News on Tuesday found that at the current rate, it would take nearly 10 years to inoculate enough Americans to bring the pandemic under control.
However, Israel, which is a fraction of the size of the United States, may find it easier to vaccinate its population than the United States, one of the largest countries in the world with more than 330 million inhabitants.
Low- and middle-income countries are also at a disadvantage. COVAX, an initiative linked to the World Health Organization to ensure equitable access to vaccines for all countries, regardless of income, said last month that it plans to allow the 190 participating countries to access doses in the first half of 2021.
Israel’s Palestinian neighbors, for example, currently do not have access to a vaccine, which means that Israelis can return to normal life, even if the virus continues to plague Palestinian cities and towns just a few kilometers away.
The health minister of the Palestinian Authority, Mai Alkaila, said Monday that health agencies in the territory are “concerned with the low vaccination rate in Arab society”.
Palestinians living under Israeli control in the occupied West Bank and Gaza are not included in the vaccination campaign, sparking criticism that Israel is not meeting its legal obligations.
If withdrawn, the ambitious vaccination campaign is likely to give Netanyahu a boost ahead of Israel’s fourth election in less than two years, scheduled for late March. The vote is an unprecedented threat to the long-term control of the ruling prime minister and comes at a time when the Netanyahu corruption trial is scheduled to accelerate in February.
Israel’s prime minister has long been accused of fraud, breach of trust and taking bribes in three long-standing corruption cases.
Lawahez Jabari contributed.