Israel to inoculate 2 million people against COVID-19 by January end

Around two million people in Benjamin Netanyahu-led Israel will have received two dose COVID-19 vaccination by January end, a pace that has been boasted as the world’s fastest by the nation Prime Minister. 

Israel launched a mass vaccination programme on December 19, when PM Netanyahu got his jab of the COVID-19 vaccine made by Pfizer-BioNTech, a US-German pharma alliance. 

Hezi Levy, Israel Health Ministry Director-General, said that because of the enthusiastic takeup, Israel would be easing the speed of vaccination to eke out stocks, reported AFP. 

The Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine needs to be given in two separate jabs at the gap of three weeks. 

“We are slowing the pace of vaccinations of the first dose so that we can keep reserved stock for a second dose for all those who got a first shot,” Levy told public broadcaster KAN.

Although, he added that nearly a fifth of Israel’s people, including health workers and those over the age of 60, would have been inoculated by the end of the month.

“By the end of January, we shall have innoculated two million residents, most of them elderly,” he said.

As of Friday, one million people had received their first jab of the COVID-19 vaccine.

“We are breaking all the records,” Netanyahu said Friday, during a visit to the Israeli Arab city of Umm Al-Fahm, where the millionth jab was reported administered.

“We are ahead of the entire world,” the premier said.

As of Sunday, Israel had recorded 435,866 cases of the COVID-19 disease, including 3,400 deaths as the nation reported its first confirmed infection from the coronavirus in February last year. It has recorded 18 confirmed cases of new coronavirus strain, which was first detected in the UK.