What exactly is the Health Ministry sharing with Pfizer? Here is the deal

The agreement between Israel and the pharmaceutical company Pfizer was published by the Health Ministry on Sunday.In the past month, Israel has established itself as a vaccination powerhouse. The government subsequently managed to persuade Pfizer to drastically increase the supply of coronavirus vaccines compared to what they had originally agreed upon, in exchange for medical data. Some however, expressed the fear that the extra dosages would come at the expense of the citizens’ privacy.However, while some parts of the agreement were blackened out, the document clearly indicates that “no Identifiable Health Information shall be shared between the parties.”According to the document, the Health Ministry commits to communicate to Pfizer the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations, severe/critical cases, ventilated patients and symptomatic cases per week, together with the number of vaccines performed. In both cases, the data is also going to be broken down according to demographic factors, such as age groups.Much of this information is publicly shared by the ministry on a daily basis.About two million Israelis have already received at least the first shot, making the country the best in the world by far in terms of vaccination per capita and putting it in the unique position to serve as a “test-state,” with the ability to provide key information to the rest of the world.As stated in the agreement, the goal of the cooperation is “to measure and analyze epidemiological data arising from the (Pfizer) Product rollout, to determine whether herd immunity is achieved after reaching a certain percentage of vaccination coverage in Israel.”

While no specific number of dosages is included in the document – at least in the visible parts – Pfizer does commit to supply enough vaccines to achieved herd immunity as quickly as possible.According to what was reported by Israeli media last week, the company is set to provide between 400,000 and 700,000 dosages every week.The agreement further states that “The data generated by the Project is aimed at helping end the global COVID-19 pandemic for the benefit of all patients inside and outside of Israel” and that “The Project will be based on the current medical literature, and guidelines adopted by inspected medical bodies.”Moreover, under the agreement, no information can be disclosed to third parties, unless specifically approved by the disclosing party. The Health Ministry will remain the owner of the data shared with Pfizer.Pfizer will share with the Health Ministry its expertise in field such as respiratory diseases, vaccines and epidemiology. The two bodies will also jointly report in submission for publication to peer-reviewed scientific journals.On Friday, the Health Ministry announced that general population over the age of 45 became eligible for a vaccine. Source