Israel announced that its army is the first in the world to be fully immune to the coronavirus

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) announced Thursday that their vaccination campaign gives its troops “herd immunity” to the coronavirus, which, according to them, made him the first army in the world to achieve this goal.

“After 10 weeks, I can say that Israel has the first army in the world to obtain collective immunity”Major General told reporters Itzik Turgeman, the army’s chief technology and logistics officer, according to local media The Times of Israel.

According to Turgeman, until this Thursday around 81% of military personnel have received a coronavirus vaccine, have contracted the disease in the past, or both.

The soldier maintains that This percentage gave IDF what is known as collective immunity or community immunity, in which a sufficiently large part of a given population is protected against a disease that can no longer spread widely within that group.. However, this claim has yet to be verified, nor is it clear how the military’s meaningful interaction with Israeli civilians might affect this collective immunity.

The IDF medical director, doctor Alon glasberg, he assured that this collective immunity would allow the army to resume more normal operations, although the troops should still wear masks, respect social distancing and comply with other coronavirus restrictions in accordance with government policy.

“But things look a lot more like they were a year ago”he told reporters, quoted by The Times of Israel.

Since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, IDF said its operational capabilities had not been significantly affected by the crisis. However, the situation affected the ability of the military to carry out normal exercises, which forced the units to reduce or even cancel some of their exercises in some cases.

“Now we can do things differently. We can train a lot more freely “Glasberg added.

The army launched its vaccination campaign in early January and, after five weeks, the Three-quarters of all IDF soldiers have already received at least one dose of the vaccine.

They were not explicitly required to be vaccinated, but they were strongly encouraged to do so. To vaccinate troops across the country, the IDF set up vaccination centers at various bases and went directly to specific units in some cases.

Turgeman noted that due to the need to keep vaccines at freezing temperatures, distributing them effectively was the most difficult aspect of this campaign. “We have reasons to be proud”, he expressed.

According to IDF statistics, about 8% of soldiers refused to be vaccinated. Some of those who did not want to receive the injections were women in early pregnancy, while others for ideological or political reasonsGlasberg said.

“But the number of people who refuse or do not want to be vaccinated is smaller every day”added.

About, the remaining 11% of soldiers who are not fully protected against the coronavirus are on their way for inoculationsince some were in quarantine at the start of the campaign, which delayed the vaccination schedule by a few weeks, The Times of Israel reports.

Despite the obstacles, army said it saw a sharp drop in the number of coronavirus cases among soldiers. When the vaccination campaign began, there were approximately 650 soldiers diagnosed with COVID-19. The number has grown to over 3,200 in February, but since then it has been reduced to 370.

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