Health

Half of Israel’s population over 60 jabbed with Covid-19 vaccine booster

Jerusalem, Aug 10 (EFE).- Nearly half of Israel’s population over 60 years old have been administered a booster shot of the Covid-19 vaccine since the campaign began 10 days ago, despite calls by the World Health Organization for a pause to prioritize the vaccination of low-income countries instead.

 “This vaccination effort is a great success,” Israeli prime minister Naftali Bennett said on the third dose, administered to some 600,000 people so far, while encouraging non-vaccinated people to get inoculated.

“Today, 90 percent of serious cases are in people over 50 years old (…) Therefore, I ask Israeli citizens of this age to be very careful in the coming weeks,” he warned.

 Over the past 24 hours, Israel reported more than 6,000 cases for the first time since February, much higher than the few dozen infections recorded in June.

“It is the only country in the world that is currently giving its elderly population the possibility of receiving a third dose (Pfizer), a booster,” Bennett said.

However, countries such as the United Arab Emirates kicked off their third dose campaign before Israel, administering the Chinese-made vaccine Sinopharm.

The campaigns went on despite the World Health Organization’s calls for a moratorium on administering booster doses of the Covid-19 vaccine, after Israel and Germany announced they will offer reinforcement jabs to vulnerable groups, while the United Kingdom plans to start doing the same in September.

“I understand the concern of all governments to protect their people from the Delta variant. But we cannot accept countries that have already used most of the global supply of vaccines using even more of it,” said WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.

Over 80% of the 4 billion vaccines administered globally were used in high and middle income countries, which account for less than half of the world population, he said, highlighting the unequal access to the most efficient tool against the pandemic. EFE

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