Israel to ramp up COVID-19 vaccination drive as infection rate steadies
Jan 11, 2021
Tel Aviv [Israel], January 11 : Israel is ramping up its COVID-19 vaccination drive as all Israelis over the age of 55 will be able to receive the first shot of the vaccine now, announced the country's Health Ministry on Monday.
On Sunday, 49,897 Israeli citizens receive their first inoculation, bringing the total to 1,870,652, The Times of Israel reported.
The country has by far the highest vaccination rate in the world, according to the Our World In Data website. The daily rate for Sunday was similarly the highest in the world.
On Sunday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed that Israel would ramp up its vaccine drive even more, reaching a target of administering 170,000 shots a day, as a new batch of hundreds of thousands of doses of Pfizer's vaccine touched down at Ben Gurion Airport.
The announcement comes at a time when the country is reporting over 6,000 daily COVID-19 cases. According to figures released on Monday morning by the ministry, 6,780 new coronavirus cases were recorded Sunday, bringing the total number of infections confirmed in Israel since the pandemic began to 495,063.
The percentage of positive tests out of total tests was slightly higher, going from 6.7 per cent on Friday to 6.3 per cent on Saturday and 7.4 per cent Sunday.
On December 19, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu received the first dose of Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine on live television and kicked off the country's vaccination campaign.
The Israeli government had started the vaccination process with some 4 million doses of the vaccine from Pfizer-BioNTech.
Moderna has recently informed the Israeli shipping firm that it can expect a shipment of up to 480,000 doses of its own COVID-19 vaccine on Wednesday or Thursday, Channel 12 News reported. A first Moderna shipment of more than 100,000 doses arrived last week.
