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HEALTH-VIRUS-ISRAEL-VACCINES
Half of Israelis have had at least one Covid jab: ministry
JÉRUSALEM, Feb 26, 2021 (BSS/AFP) – Just over half of Israel’s population
has had at least a first dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech coronavirus vaccine, the
health ministry said Friday in its latest update.
It said that 4.65 million of the country’s 9.29 million population had
received a first shot, with 3.27 million of them getting the recommended
second dose too.
Takeup of the second jab topped 85 percent among people aged 70 and over,
the ministry said.
Israel launched its massive inoculation operation on December 19, backed
by a deal with Pfizer which mounted an airlift of its vaccine in exchange for
biomedical data on its effects.
A first dose of the vaccine is 85 percent effective two to four weeks
after its injection, Israel’s Sheba Hospital said last week in a study
published in scientific journal The Lancet.
Pfizer’s product is 94 percent effective against symptomatic cases of
Covid-19, according to a study of 1.2 million people in Israel published in
the New England Journal of Medicine on Wednesday, confirming data already
made public in the Jewish state.
“This is the first peer-reviewed large scale evidence for the
effectiveness of a vaccine in real world conditions,” said Ben Reis, a
researcher at Harvard Medical School and one of the paper’s authors.
Despite the promising results, Israel has imposed a weekend night curfew
over the carnival-like Jewish holiday of Purim, to dampen festive gatherings
it fears could cause a spike in infection.
Since Thursday, people have been forbidden to stray more than 1,000 metres
(yards) from home between 8:30 pm and 5:00 am daily and parties are banned.
Gatherings are limited to a maximum of 10 people in closed spaces and 20
people in the open.
Purim typically includes costumes and boisterous public celebrations
marking a story dating from fourth-century Persia that saw Jews defeat a
murderous plot against them.
For many it also involves services in synagogues and shared meals.
“For this Purim, there is a mixture of joy and worry about corona,” Health
Minister Yuli Edelstein wrote on his Twitter account on Friday.
The ministry’s latest update said that nearly 770,000 cases had been
recorded in Israel since the start of the pandemic, including close to 5,700
deaths.
While Israel is carrying out one of the largest vaccination campaigns in
the world, Palestinians have received just over 30,000 doses, including 2,000
from the Jewish state, which has pledged to provide it with 5,000.
BSS/AFP/SSS/1913 hrs