‘India, Israel working together to fight Covid-19’

Rony Yedidia-clein, Deputy Chief of Mission, Israel Embassy, says so many people have been vaccinated in Israel that her country has almost reached herd immunity.

On the occasion of Israel’s National Day, Rony Yedidiaclein, Deputy Chief of Mission, Israel Embassy spoke with Newsx/the Sunday Guardian. Excerpts:

Q: I want to start out by asking you about a very topical question about the Covid-19 surge, which we’re seeing across the world; we’re seeing in India as well. How is Israel keeping up the fight currently against Covid-19? A: Well, I’m very proud to say that over the past few months, we’ve had a very intensive and all-pervasive vaccination campaign, where almost all our adults, about 75% of people over 16 years old, have been vaccinated. I was looking at the figures, earlier today—5.3 million people have gotten at least their first dose, and of those, 4.9 6 million have received their second dose already, So, we’ve been very good about getting the vaccines. People have been very cooperative about that, and it’s brought the numbers way down; there haven’t been new cases—only a few new cases and no deaths over the past few days. Fortunately, and so, Israel has been very aggressive about fighting the… (infection), and we have been very successful in fighting it. Q: Now if we talk about our two countries, Ma’am. India and Israel have of course a long and historic relationship. Please share some key aspects of this relationship.

A: Well, you know, we’ve had diplomatic relations for almost 30 years. Next year in 2022, we will celebrate our 30th anniversary of diplomatic relations. And over these years, we have seen these relations grow and become more visible and more important. I think that we can say that the visibility of these relations has really become great; we seek cooperation in