Coronavirus: Israel’s vaccination campaign opens to all as pace slows

The effectiveness of the national coronavirus vaccination campaign has amazed the world. About five million vaccines have been administered in the past month and a half, with some 3,236,259 people vaccinated as of Wednesday morning, including 1,855,071 with the two injections.

In recent weeks, some 200,000 vaccines have been administered every day.

However, only around 100,000 injections were given on Tuesday, 115,000 on Monday and 130,000 on Sunday.

Three out of four health funds explained The Jerusalem Post that they are seeing a slower response rate among the younger population, while the fourth pointed out that the demand is still high, but has not received enough doses from the health ministry.

“With the extension of the vaccination campaign to young people, the rate of people coming to be vaccinated has also started to decrease, for many reasons: young people think they are not going to get sick, women worry about their fertility, etc. Said Moshe Mosko, a spokesperson for the Leumit health fund.

“We have reached a point where we are inoculating half of the people we previously vaccinated. While until last week we were administering up to 15,000 injections per day, there were days this week when we did not reach 7,000. “

Leumit has around 500,000 members over the age of 16; about 200,000 have already received the first dose, of which 125,000 have also received the second.

“We call people, we talk to them, we text,” Mosko added, welcoming the decision to make the vaccine available to the entire adult population. “We must preserve the momentum of the campaign that we have lost in recent days.”

At Leumit, about 96% of those who received the first dose came for the second.

“However, on Tuesday,” Mosko said, “about 12% of those who made an appointment for the first injection did not show up. We were very disappointed.

In Meuhedet, the number of vaccinations per day has increased from around 30,000 to around 10,000. A spokeswoman said they hope this will change as the campaign expands. She also pointed out that people who make an appointment for a shot show up, in almost all cases, for both the first and second injection.

The health fund has around 1.2 million members, 54% of whom have already recovered from COVID or have been vaccinated.

A different perspective was offered by a spokesperson for Maccabi.

“We are limited by the supply from the Ministry of Health; demand is still high, ”the spokesperson noted, expressing hope that as the campaign is extended to all ages, more doses will be provided to the health fund.

While Maccabi has the capacity to immunize around 60,000 people per day – and their record number of one-day vaccinations was 53,000 – in the past two days, they have only vaccinated around 30,000 people per day. .

Some 1.66 million of Maccabi’s 2.5 million members are eligible for a vaccine. About 900,000 have already received the first blow, and about 500,000 the second.

On Tuesday evening, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel would aim to vaccinate 90% of citizens over 50 against the coronavirus within the next two weeks.

Currently, 77% of people over 50 have been vaccinated, leaving more than 400,000 people in this age group still at risk of contracting the virus. While the vaccination campaign will now include the entire adult population, the health ministry has instructed health funds to continue to focus on people over 50.

Maayan Jaffe-Hoffman contributed to this report.