Thank you for inviting me. It's a pleasure to be here.
I was asked to speak about Israel's vaccination campaign, which is quite a successful one. We started early. On December 19, the Prime Minister and the Minister of Health were publicly vaccinated, and from the morning of the 20th we started to vaccinate widely all over the country.
We decided to go on a simple scheme, meaning that from the first day we vaccinated everybody who was age 60 and above, and medical personnel and first responders all over the country, with no subgrouping. Then, on a weekly basis, we dropped the age by five years, until at the point of week eight, the campaign was fully opened for the whole population over the age of 16.
We are now discussing when to start vaccinating teenagers. We have not yet authorized vaccine for ages 12 to 16, but we are working on it. I believe that at the end of next week, or the week after, that will be authorized in Israel and we'll be ready to start.
As you may know, Israel decided to take a single approach. We are using only Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines. We do have a clear deal with Pfizer regarding shipment dates and the exact terms of how the whole project is working. We were appealing to them, as we are running it as a national IT-driven operation where every case is fully registered not only with the national registry, but at the same time, registered by the recipient's HMO into their personal electronic medical record.
As I mentioned, the whole project was paperless. You had to pre-register for your appointment, although if you did not register, you had a good chance to be vaccinated anyhow.
At the peak of this vaccination program, we vaccinated more than 200,000 people a day. To remind you, we have 9.25 million residents here in the State of Israel. We vaccinate everybody here: citizens, temporary residents, diplomats and foreign workers. Even asylum seekers and illegal immigrants were fully vaccinated from the first day. As well, we vaccinated our diplomatic corps around the world. We hoped to have some bilateral agreement with countries and we understood that it could not work at the pace that we were looking for, so we basically vaccinated everybody by ourselves.
Compliance was good. I think the psychology of supply and demand in the beginning was a major issue for the public. People were queuing and were trying to get it sooner rather than later. Of course, it changed as this campaign moved on, and now we are putting a lot of emphasis on the last part of the population who are hesitant or against it. We do understand that a devoted anti-vaxxer will never be convinced, so we are putting our efforts into hesitant people and into some communities that were slow in terms of the numbers, such as the Bedouin in the Negev and some of the Orthodox communities, who we are pushing ahead to be vaccinated.
It's not obligatory. You have the right not to be vaccinated, although there are some crucial working places, such as the health sector, that expect everybody who gives crucial services to the public to be vaccinated. We do not have a legal framework to force it, but it's kind of an understanding that it is what we expect from our employees.
We issue what is known as a “vaccination certificate”, which is fully electronic; it's a bar code. You get it a week after the second dose.
At this point, I might add that we decided to stick to the manufacturer's protocol and to vaccinate everybody for the second dose on day 21.
The green pass is another document, which you are entitled to receive if you are COVID-recovered or fully vaccinated. That allows you into what are known as “green pass zones” in the country, mostly restaurants and bars. Gyms used to ask for it, but now, by law, gyms are open to everybody, including public swimming pools. Large cultural events and concerts, all of them, could operate under a green pass registry, meaning that they are allowed to have much larger gatherings of people than what is known as the “purple tag”, which is a standard COVID-19 restriction for general places like supermarkets, pharmacies, hospitals, and so on.
Just to sum up the numbers, more than 90% of our medical personnel are vaccinated. More than 90% of those 60 and above are vaccinated. If we look at the adult population of Israel, 80% of the population were all vaccinated with, at least a single dose or had recovered. Around 9% of our population was found by PCR test to be positive in terms of carrying COVID-19 at some point during the past year.
That's where we are. I would be very happy to answer questions. I guess there will be a few.
Thank you.