Edelstein: Only way to deal with coronavirus outbreak is to lock down

• Published date: 07 January 2021
• Author: YAAKOV KATZ
• Publication title: Jerusalem Post, The: Web Edition Articles (Israel)

We are now, I am, the whole [Health] Ministry, all the Israeli health workers are immunized. Finally, after more than half a year of working without a smile on our faces, we are now able to smile.

I hear that from doctors and nurses, not because the coronavirus [pandemic] is over, but because as many nurses who are giving out the vaccine said to me, "finally we are doing something with hope," not just taking care of patients.

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How?

Even though we were an early bird [in receiving the vaccine], Israel is a small country as we all know, and I said loud and clear to the professional team in the ministry, who by the way as you can see did a wonderful job, I said to them, "the moment any company has a vaccine [available] they won't even be looking in our direction, they will be looking for markets that are a hundred times larger than us."

That's why we had to be the first to by a place in line, we weren't buying a vaccine, but hope for a vaccine at that stage.

So, we signed with the right companies - with Moderna, with Pfizer and we negotiated with several other companies. We finalized the agreement with AstraZeneca a couple of months ago and so we now have all the leading firms in our future agreements.

Our HMOs are proving right now, that even with all the criticism with all the criticism they might have with taking appointments taking too much time or this and that, that right now at this very second thousands of employees are working all around the country [to distribute the vaccine].

And this is a very significant addition to the answer, is that these workers are all around the country, because from what I see in many countries around the world is this natural desire to organize some huge station, stadium or velodrome, you name it, and to hope that thousands of people will flow there and it's not happening.

We are getting to every developing town, moshav or kibbutz with small quantities of vaccines. Originally there were huge sets [given to us] which [numbered] in the thousands. We couldn't administer it in the North of the country, or the South of the country [in such large quantities], but with world famous Israeli technologies we overcame the difficulties and now we are [vaccinating] all around the country.

That enables especially the population at risk, over sixty, or those who are sick, to get the vaccine on time. We are now, I would say, around 60% of those...