Israel starts vaccinating children aged 5-11 to keep another wave at bay

To ward off another COVID-19 wave, Israel started rolling out COVID-19 vaccines for children aged 5 to 11. With this, Israel joined a handful of countries that have started vaccinating their young.

The Jewish state, over the summer, witnessed a rise in COVID-19 cases, brought on by the spreading of the deadly delta variant. This climb in the numbers prompted Israel to launch its vaccination campaign at the earliest.

However, with the infections cropping up again, Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said the nation is experiencing a “children’s wave”. The title was given because about half of the recently confirmed cases were among children below the age of 11.

Israeli authorities had already started immunising those aged 12-17. However, the age was brought down after recommendations from the Israeli scientists’ panel.

While the vaccinations of the children were due to begin on Tuesday, an AFP report said that the administration of the doses began on Monday night in Tel Aviv.

“Right now during the epidemic, the best tool to protect our children is vaccination,” news agency AFP quoted Heli Nave as saying. She gave her statement while standing outside a clinic giving the Pfizer-BioNTech jabs to children.

What convinced her? She said that this decision was not an easy one, however, was convinced by the data from the United States, that started immunising 5 to 11-year-olds earlier this month.

As per an AFP report, the prime minister will have his youngest son take the vaccine.

Israel was one of the first countries to launch vaccines against the coronavirus last year. This was only possible due to a deal with Pfizer that gave it access to millions of doses. In return, Pfizer wanted data on the vaccine’s efficacy.

In Israel, a country of 9 million people, more than 5.7 million are fully vaccinated.

Earlier on Sunday, Israel’s pandemic advisory panel recommended a booster shot, citing that it is much more efficient than the first two doses of the vaccine.