Health Minister Yuli Edelstein on Thursday urged those 16 and over to get vaccinated, tweeting, “Take advantage of the opportunity that almost no country in the world has.”
He posted Health Ministry data showing the number of shots given on Wednesday had dropped to 107,000, nearly half the peak volume of recent weeks. The daily average for the past seven days was 114,000, compared to over 170,000 in the previous two seven-day periods.
Despite the drop, and after the Health Ministry said on Wednesday that it would open vaccination to those 16 and up, there were reports that at least one of the country’s health maintenance organizations did not have enough shots to meet demand.
Nonetheless, by Thursday morning Maccabi clinics in Tel Aviv were allowing all those age 16 and up to begin booking appointments.
“Unfortunately, we’re really not seeing the number of people we used to see,” an official at Clalit was quoted as saying. “We’ve seen a dramatic decline in the rate of vaccinations.”
Israel has led the world’s most rapid inoculation campaign, with over a third of the population getting at least one dose. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu personally lobbied Pfizer/BioNTech to ensure that millions of vaccines would be quickly supplied to the country and, along with Edelstein, has touted the vaccination drive as a central plank in dealing with the virus outbreak.
Health Ministry figures released Thursday showed that so far some 3.3 million people have received at least the first shot, among them 1.9 million who have also had the second dose.
Yet, despite the relatively high number of vaccinations in the Israeli population and weeks of lockdown, the virus continues to run rampant, largely due to more contagious variants, and the country remains under lockdown.
The ministry data showed there were 76,896 active virus patients in the country, of whom 7,385 were diagnosed Wednesday. There were 1,103 patients in serious condition.
The positive test rate on Wednesday was 8.9%, its lowest level in 12 days, but still significantly higher than the 6.5% recorded in early January.
Since the start of the outbreak early last year, 671,459 people have been diagnosed with COVID-19 in Israel, and 4,947 have died of the disease, according to the ministry.
