Video Of The Week - Israel Wins Worldwide Praise for Vaccination
Program - https://tinyurl.com/y44fp3ls
Anshel Pfeffer, 03- 1- 2021, The
Sunday Times https://tinyurl.com/y5dsjqho
The almost deserted
street outside the Misgav Ladach hospital in western Jerusalem belies the
intense operation going on inside.
Every other minute,
an elderly person or couple, quietly walk in, swipe their electronic card and
take a seat in a corridor on the ground floor. A supervisor checks them off on
a clipboard and, within minutes, they are sitting in one of the six curtained
booths, baring their arms for the first dose of the Covid-19 vaccine.
Within minutes they
are out, with an appointment, three weeks hence, for their second jab.
“I was a bit sceptical
at first about being vaccinated,” says Kenneth Cohen, a retired rabbi from
Jerusalem. “Two of my daughters said that there may be side-effects. But my
brother had his vaccine last week and felt fine, so I guessed that since we
both have the same DNA, I’d be fine. I didn’t even need an appointment.”
As the sun set on
Friday afternoon and the Jewish Shabbat began, more than a million Israelis had
received their first dose of Pfizer’s vaccine, in a drive that began less than
two weeks earlier. That is more than 11% of Israel’s population of nine
million, the highest proportion of any country yet to be vaccinated. In
Britain, which was the first to begin vaccinations, only 1.5% have received
their first jab.
The atmosphere now
in vaccine centres across Israel is businesslike. But in the earlier days,
there were ecstatic scenes. Most of those receiving vaccines so far are over 60
and have been sheltering at home for long, lonely months.
“At first, many
people coming in were so moved at the thought that they could soon be with
their families that we had incredible scenes,” says Yael Nitzan, normally
manager of the hospital’s sleep lab but now supervisor of the vaccination
centre. “Some of the old people started singing. One 80-year-old woman wanted
me to dance with her.”
One million Israelis
vaccinated in world-leading drive
One of the nurses,
Manal Abu-Rhami, said: “I’ve had patients asking me if they could give me a
hug. I had to tell them that it will take time for the vaccine to take effect and
that they still have to be careful and avoid contact with others for a while
yet.”
Every two hours, a
refrigerated van parks outside and a courier arrives with a blue padded
carrier. Inside is a flat cardboard container. Within are further layers of padding
and a small tray of glass vials with purple tops, containing the vaccine. They
are placed in a fridge.
The Pfizer-BioNTech
vaccine is stored at deep sub-zero temperatures and once a tray has been
removed from storage, the doses need to be used within a few hours.
While Israel has
prioritised those over 60 for the first phase, often, towards the end of the
day, vaccine centres will have dozens, even hundreds, of doses still in hand.
As word quickly gets around on social media, younger Israelis gather in the
hope of getting an early jab.
How has Israel,
which does not manufacture the vaccine and has so far flown them in from
Pfizer’s manufacturing hub in Belgium, become the world leader in vaccination?
Israel is a
relatively small country, with strong, centralised hubs that allow quick transport
from the main store, near Ben Gurion airport in the centre of the country. The
Israeli army has also provided refrigerated lorries.
Then there are the
health maintenance organisations (HMOs). Israelis enjoy free healthcare but,
unlike in Britain where there is one HMO, the National Health Service, Israel
has four public HMOs that compete for members and government funding.
“The internal
competition gives Israel a dramatic advantage now,” says Eyal Gabai, chairman
of the Meuhedet HMO. “Since our budgets are determined by our ability to
attract new members and keep those we already have, each HMO is constantly
looking at what the others are doing, copying each other and looking for better
ways to make services more accessible. That’s why every Israeli now has
complete online access to all their medical files and can book video
consultations with their doctors. And we all have nationwide networks of
clinics, so every Israeli lives very near one.
“The moment the
vaccines arrived in the country, each HMO has been working to be the one who
can get as many of its members vaccinated, as quickly and easily as possible.”
The success of the
vaccine drive is in stark contrast to other aspects of Israel’s handling of the
pandemic. The country is in the midst of its third nationwide lockdown, due to spiraling
rates of infection and hospitalisations — though across the country, many
citizens seem to be ignoring the lockdown and travelling and socialising nearly
as normal.
Israel is now
expected to have a surplus of vaccine doses, due to the orders it has placed
with multiple manufacturers. At some point, public health experts believe, it
will supply some of these to the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and
Gaza, which has yet to begin vaccinating Palestinian citizens.
There is also a
political angle to the vaccination drive. Israel originally signed on with the
two other large pharmaceutical companies developing vaccines — Moderna and
AstraZeneca. But when it turned out that Pfizer would be the first to have a
tested vaccine on the market, the government entered negotiations with Pfizer,
agreeing to pay a much higher price to ensure early shipments of four million
doses.
Binyamin Netanyahu,
the prime minister, was involved in the negotiations, speaking on the phone
with Pfizer’s chief executive, Albert Bourla, and directing the Treasury to pay
a premium. Netanyahu was at the airport to greet the first shipment. The next
day he became the first Israeli to receive the vaccine. Since then he has
visited a vaccination centre nearly every day, always accompanied by television
crews.
Israel is heading
for another parliamentary election, its fourth in under two years, and
Netanyahu’s ruling party, Likud, whose government has so far been blamed for
haphazard handling of the pandemic, has been trailing in the polls. His
campaign is based on portraying him as the man who saved Israel from Covid-19,
by vaccinating its people before any other nation. And if the current rates
hold up, a majority of Israelis will have received their vaccines just in time
for election day on March 23.
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