Israel says it has vaccinated one million people – more than a tenth of its population – against COVID-19, as it rolls out one of the world’s earliest and most rapid inoculation campaigns.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Health Minister Yuli Edelstein hailed the millionth vaccination on Friday in Umm al-Fahm, a predominantly Arab city in the country’s north.
Netanyahu called it a moment of “great excitement”.
Israel has administered the first dose of vaccine to more than 10 percent of the population, according to Edelstein, less than two weeks after the launch of its inoculation campaign.
The goal is to vaccinate 5.5 million people in the country of 9.3 million, Netanyahu said.
BBC News
Published
image captionIsrael has given priority to the over-60s in its vaccination campaign
Israel has given vaccinations against coronavirus to more than one million people, the highest rate in the world, as global immunisation efforts step up.
In comparison, France had vaccinated 138 people in total by 30 December.
The comparative figures on vaccination are put together by Our World in Data, which is a collaboration between Oxford University and an educational charity.
They measure the number of people who have received a first dose of the coronavirus vaccine. Most of the vaccines approved for use so far rely on two doses, given more than a week apart.
Israeli Prime Minister Minister Benjamin Netanyahu receives a coronavirus disease (COVID-19) vaccine at Sheba Medical Center in Ramat Gan, Israel December 19, 2020. Photo: REUTERS/Amir Cohen/Pool.
Over one million Israelis have now been vaccinated against the coronavirus in the first weeks of the country’s rollout, a per capita rate that is by far the fastest internationally and which has stunned observers from around the world.
More than 11% of the country’s population has now been given the COVID-19 vaccine more than three times the next-fastest country, Bahrain, and well above the global average of 0.13%, according to data from Oxford University’s Our World in Data.