It paid a sky-high price to access one of the best coronavirus vaccines in the world and also agreed to share data on the accelerated rollout – but Israel’s expensive gamble seems to have paid off.
The small country in the Middle East was late joining the line for the Pfizer vaccine behind the US, Canada and Japan, according to The Times of Israel, but it still managed to gain fast-tracked access to millions of doses.
This was partly due to Israel paying a lot more for the vaccine – as much as double what the United States and United Kingdom signed up for per dose – but also because it agreed to share data on the results of the rollout with Pfizer.
“We didn’t quibble about the price,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told reporters in January.
Mr Netanyahu also acknowledged that one of the selling points for Pfizer was that Israel “could serve as a world laboratory for herd immunity or something approaching herd immunity very quickly”.
Israel “can serve as a global test case” on the coronavirus vaccine and on reopening the economy, he said.
Two months since the vaccine began to be rolled out, experts are now watching closely to understand its effectiveness in the real world.
Read the article by Charis Chang in The Morning Bulletin.