Is Israel on the verge of destroying nearly a million Pfizer Covid vaccines?

This is news that may alert the Argentine government if it decides to adapt the legislation on vaccine Pfizer against the coronavirus and is ready to vaccinate very quickly.

Israel may have to destroy up to a million doses of vaccine Pfizer-BioNTech, which will expire at the end of the month, unless another country capable of handling them is found.

The news was alerted by the British newspaper Time. A plan to move them to Britain appears to have failed.

About 65% of Israelis, more than 5.5 million people, received two doses of the vaccine. The country is try to encourage younger generations to get vaccinated, with less success.

The Israeli government has contacted several countries to transfer overage of more than one million doses to whoever can use them immediately.

In return, Israel would receive doses manufactured later, which could be more modern than current ones.

Consultations were also made with the manufacturer Pfizer on whether the expiration date could be extended. However, this is unlikely.

Failure of negotiations with Great Britain

One possibility suggested was to conduct a “vaccine swap” with Great Britain. An Israeli government official said: “There have been discussions with Britain, but to our regret, despite the will of both sides, it has not worked.

In addition, a plan to transfer most of the extra doses to the West Bank has failed last month.

The Palestinian leadership canceled the transfer after media reported that the doses would expire soon, although they were aware of the schedule.

Only a small fraction of the population of the West Bank has been fully immunized.

Regrowth by Delta variant

In the past two weeks, there has been a minor outbreak in Israel of the Delta variant, which was first discovered in India. Schools have been particularly affected.

The Israeli government has launched a campaign to vaccinate young people between the ages of 12 and 15. But they are unlikely to use more than a third of the excess doses on time.

380 new cases were confirmed on Wednesday, the highest number in three months. But it has yet to result in an increase in severe cases and hospitalizations.

Israel began its vaccination campaign in December of last year. It quickly had the highest proportion of people vaccinated in the world.

The rapid vaccination rate was due in part to an agreement between the Israeli government and Pfizer for early deliveries, in exchange for access to information from the scanned medical records.

Public health providers have also proven their effectiveness in immunization.

Many countries around the world still have limited access to vaccines.

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director general of the World Health Organization (WHO), said this week he was “facing a two-way pandemic, fueled by inequality. This was due to the lower vaccination rate in developing countries, ”he said.

Covax, the WHO initiative to deliver vaccines to the poorest countries, has so far delivered 90 million doses to 133 countries. A small fraction of the approximately 3 billion injections administered worldwide so far.

Much larger amounts of doses will be available through the initiative later this year. But There is concern that developing countries may not be able to administer large quantities of vaccines.

Israeli medical authorities said the country had not joined Covax because any excess dose was supposed to be transferred to the Palestinian Authority.

Paris, correspondent

CB