Israel Conducts The World’s Fastest Vaccine Rollout

Three key takeaways from the most successful vaccination campaign

Despite having internal political conflicts, Israel has been able to conduct the world’s fastest vaccine rollout to date. It is also advantageous for Israel since it is comparatively a small country in both geography and population.

The country’s vaccination started on 19th December 2020. Since then, according to Our World in Data, as at 05th June 2021, 63.03% of its population have been given at least one dose of the coronavirus vaccine. And 59% have been fully vaccinated.

Being the fastest and the most efficient, Israel is showing the world how to conduct a vaccination. The strength of Israel’s vaccination campaign began with the procurement followed by efficient administration.

Procurement

Covid-19 has spread in almost every country in the world. Countries have used their own strategies to deal with the pandemic but there is only one strategy to come back to normal; vaccination.

Early bird-procurement of vaccines had put Israel in front of rollout race. It is even reported that prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu overpaid to get the jabs as soon as possible. However, the country has not publicized the confidential agreements.

Initially, Israel has expressed the interest to the GAVI-coordinated COVAX program to get the vaccines to 20% of the population.

The aggressive procurement made Israel one of the first countries to receive Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine ahead of other nations through an agreement to provide Israeli’s personal medical data for the purpose of future research. However, not everyone is happy about Israel being a testing laboratory for the world.

Though rapid and early procurement did set the stage for efficient vaccination campaign, Israel’s rollout became a huge success because of their vaccine administration strategy.

Distribution

It was understood before that vaccinating around 70% of the population is sufficient to achieve the herd immunity. But since even an immunized person can transmit Covid-19 to another, herd immunity is not the solution. Therefore, now countries have to vaccinate people as much as possible, may be the entire population.

This would be relatively an easy task for Israel having only a nine million population.

Every Israeli, by law, has to enrol in one of the non-profit health maintenance organizations (HMO’s). The HMO’s provide healthcare to every citizen in the country by providing medical expenses, clinics and even doctors. This HMO structure has made the Israel’s healthcare system one of the most efficient in the world.

The Covid-19 vaccines have also been distributed through these four HMO’s. The ministry of health receives the vaccines from overseas and it distributes them among the four HMO’s. Each HMO connects with their users via mails, texts and calls and gets them registered for the rollout. In that way every Israeli knows who is responsible for their jab and each HMO works hard to get the vaccine in their users’ arm as soon as possible.

The priority has been given to people over 60 years, nursing home residents, people with serious medical conditions and front-line health care workers. After immunizing a significant portion of the population, the country has now started vaccinating children in 12–15 age group.

Back to normal

Israel is now slowly returning back to normal. The government has lifted off all major restrictions for outdoor events, gyms, public pools with masks remain mandatory.

The country is dealing with only 0.81 cases per million which once peaked at 1378.77 cases per million.

By being the leader of the vaccination, Israel is providing valuable information to the rest of the world. Not only regarding the vaccination process, but also it is providing guidance about upcoming challenges in the post-pandemic world.

The health ministry of Israel has introduced the “green pass” concept which anyone who has already received both shots of the vaccine or recovered from Covid-19 can now attend events, gyms, hotels, theaters, and concerts etc. People who are not fully immunized also have access to above places with some limitations.

Following Israel, countries which already fully vaccinated the majority of the population are now considering “green passports” for immunized people. And the world is now in discussion even to allow people with green passports to travel without quarantining. However, the concept is not popular among some people in and out of Israel as the rich and privileged people get early access to vaccines thus early entry to post-pandemic world.

Whether it is procurement, distribution or returning to normal, one thing common in Israel’s strategies is that being first.

The more time we consume, the more people we lose. This is a race that everybody else has to get in.