“It was important to set an example so that all Israelis get vaccinated”.

On December 19, 2020, as the threat of a third lockdown loomed in Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was vaccinated in front of television cameras and kicked off the national vaccination campaign.  

Two months later, the Jewish state has the highest proportion of the vaccinated population in the world.

More than 3.8 million people have received at least one dose of the vaccine, or 44% of the country's 9 million inhabitants.

An effective strategy therefore, supported by the results of a study, Sunday February 14, which indicates a drastic drop in the rate of infection and serious cases among the vaccinated population.    

Researchers at the Israeli Health Insurance Fund Clalit compared 600,000 people who received the two recommended doses of Pfizer / BioNTech vaccine and an equivalent number of people who did not receive an injection.

The results are convincing to say the least: "There was a 94% reduction in the symptomatic infection rate and a 92% drop in the critical illness rate," the insurer reported in a press release.  

"The publication of preliminary results at this point is intended to emphasize to the unvaccinated population that the vaccine is very effective and prevents severe morbidity," explains Clalit.

A convincing demonstration, according to Professor Jean-Daniel Lefèvre, specialist in vaccinology and head of the immunology service at Henri-Mondor hospital in Créteil, interviewed by France 24. "Pfizer studies already showed an efficacy rate of more than 90% but these were clinical studies carried out on homogeneous groups. This new study tends to show that the vaccine is also effective on the general population, which is far from always being the case. these are very encouraging results, ”he analyzes.  

Vaccines against medical data   

In the race for the vaccine, it is clear that Israel has seen the big picture.

While, as in many countries, priority has been given to the most vulnerable, almost all people aged 60 and over have been vaccinated in just a few weeks.

For Gwendoline Debono, correspondent for France 24 in Jerusalem, this success is notably due to the architecture of the national health system: “here there are four health insurance funds.

Every Israeli is affiliated with one of these funds.

You only need to call to be redirected to a clinic near your home where the vaccine can be administered.

This easy and efficient system is perfectly suited to a mass vaccination context. ”  

But as Europe is falling behind due to delivery problems, how has the Jewish state been able to ensure a flawless supply of laboratories?

By negotiating, from mid-December, a specific agreement with the American pharmaceutical giant Pfizer for the sharing of its medical data.

“To be sure not to run out of vaccines, the government has given the laboratory full visibility into Israeli patient data,” explains Professor Jean-Daniel Lefèvre.

“The laboratories thus had the opportunity to closely monitor the effectiveness of their vaccine on the population.

It is a political choice which may raise ethical questions of confidentiality, even if the data is anonymized, but which has proved to be very effective ”.  

Lightened social restriction measures 

Hit hard by the Covid-19 pandemic, the country has had to confine itself three times and has taken extremely restrictive measures to limit the spread of the virus.

If the signals now seem green, the authorities are betting on caution with a gradual and localized deconfinement, which began on February 7.

While travel restrictions have already been relaxed, street shops, shopping centers, markets, museums and even bookstores should reopen from February 21.    

Hotels, sports halls and cultural venues should follow, but only for citizens with a "green pass", assigned to people already vaccinated or considered immune after being sick.

If international flights remain almost impossible for the time being, this system will also apply to travel abroad: an agreement has been signed with Cyprus as well as with Greece to allow the movement of citizens already vaccinated.   

“Israeli citizens are quite happy with the way the vaccination campaign was managed, but they also know that it will not solve the crisis on its own,” explains Gwendoline Debono.

“Some sections of the population remain reluctant to be vaccinated like the Orthodox and Israeli Arabs.

Furthermore, the vaccination campaign for those under 35 only started very recently and it is still a little early to make a real assessment ”.

Despite the containment measures and the vaccination campaign, the virus continues to circulate in Israel, which has more than 729,000 cases and 5,400 deaths.

An active circulation which worries all the more as the British variant, more contagious, is in the majority. 

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