About half a million Israelis received the Pfizer-developed Coronavirus (COVID-19) vaccine just nine days into Operation “Lend a Shoulder” to inoculate the population.
Health Minister Yuli Edelstein said Tuesday that more than 115,000 citizens were vaccinated on Monday, and in total, 495,000 were vaccinated.
In the nine days of vaccinations, Israel has more vaccinated citizens than the 408,990 infected since the beginning of the outbreak in Israel in February.
“It is not by chance that we are the leading country in the world in terms of vaccination speed. We continue to vaccinate Israel!” Edelstein declared.
Israel signed contracts with Pfizer, Moderna and AstraZeneca. 14 million vaccine doses are expected to arrive in the next few months.
Israel entered a countrywide lockdown on Sunday night, the country’s third nationwide COVID-19 closure in 10 months.
All commerce and recreation venues are completely closed except for deliveries, and public transportation will be reduced to 50%.
The education system is partially closed. Special education is running as usual.
The two-week lockdown, which can be extended for another two weeks, will end when the basic (virus) reproduction number (R) falls below 1 and the number of new cases per day falls below 1,000.
The Ministry of Health updated Tuesday morning that it recorded 5,449 new cases in the past 24 hours.
Of the 99,758 tests done Monday, a climbing 5.6% returned positive.
According to the Ministry of Health’s data, 593 patients are hospitalized in serious condition, of whom 146 are on life support.
3,256 Israelis have died of the virus since the outbreak in February.