Starting Sunday, Israel will aim to “increase to a rate of 170,000 vaccinated a day,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Sunday just as a plane of 700,000 Pfizer coronavirus vaccines landed in the country.The announcement came only hours after Health Minister Yuli Edelstein said that he had instructed his staff to evaluate the possibility of offering vaccinations throughout the night in order to speed up the country’s inoculation.At the airport, Edelstein committed that by mid-March Israeli will reach five million citizens who will be vaccinated. “Tonight we will sit down with the health funds and prepare for the next stage of the vaccination campaign,” he said, to which Netanyahu added that “we will have a really happy Passover.”Sunday marked the first shipment of what are expected to be millions of Pfizer vaccines arriving in Israel by the end of March.
“We will be the first country to emerge from the coronavirus,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said. “We will vaccinate all relevant populations and anyone who wants to can be vaccinated.”Netanyahu said that Pfizer is going to send shipments “one after the other in order to complete vaccinating the entire adult population of Israel above the age of 16 by the end of March.”
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Netanyahu added that on Sunday, another large shipment is going to arrive and the country will start to inoculate the second cohort of people ages 50 and older.
He and Edelstein received their second doses of the coronavirus vaccine Saturday night in a small ceremony at Sheba Medical Center.
Health Ministry officials presented Edelstein on Sunday with an updated list of priority vaccinations, which includes teachers and other school staff, who are expected to be inoculated between Wednesday and Thursday of this week.
Edelstein emphasizes that even as vaccines are open to the masses, preference should continue to be given to those most at risk.
So far, more than 1.8 million Israelis have received their first dose of the vaccine, Edelstein reported early Sunday. More than 40,000 Israelis were inoculated on Saturday alone.
Almost three-fourths (72%) of people over the age of 60 have been inoculated, the Health Ministry reported Sunday morning, with 59% of all those who have been vaccinated being over 60.
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