Israel begins booster shot campaign for over-60s
TEL AVIV: Israel launched a campaign on Friday to give the over-60s coronavirus booster shots, at a time when the rest of the world is still struggling to complete the standard course.
Kicking off the campaign, Israel’s President Isaac Herzog, 60, received a third dose of the Pfizer/biontech COVID-19 vaccine at a hospital in Ramat Gan, near Tel Aviv.
“We are beginning the booster vaccination” so that life in Israel can return to “normal” as soon as possible, Herzog said ater geting the injection.
“With this new step of the Israeli government... I believe that it’s also a lesson to the entire humankind that we have to protect each other and take the necessary steps.”
An Israeli epidemiologist of Jerusalem’s Hebrew University, Hagai Levine, acknowledged his country was going it alone with third shots, which have yet to be approved in the United States or European Union.
“This decision is based on experts’ opinion, on logic but not on solid scientific evidence, but that is okay,” Levine said.
“In public health and in medicine, you sometime make a decision based on your experience and reason.”
Israel was quick to roll out its vaccination campaign and had dropped many restrictions on public gatherings in June, as new COVID-19 cases shrank from 10,000 a day to less than 100.
But infections have soared in recent weeks, and masks are once again mandatory in enclosed public places.
About 55 per cent of its nine million population has been double vaccinated, most with the Pfizer-biontech jab, thanks to a massive campaign launched in late December ater an agreement with its developers.
About one million Israelis eligible for the shot, however, still refuse to be vaccinated.
Israel’s digitised medical databases allowed for rapid large-scale studies, and its initial vaccine rollout of the jab was among the world’s fastest.
Prime Minister Natali Bennet announced the start of the booster campaign for over 60s on Thursday, as concern mounts over the fastspreading Delta variant of the coronavirus.