From Our World in Data:

Israel has an old fashioned greatest-good-for-the-greatest-number style philosophy, so it’s interesting to keep an eye on what they do. From the Times of Israel:

Netanyahu aims for 25% of Israelis vaccinated in month; 250,000 had shots so far

PM says he wants to lift pace of inoculations to 150,000 a day; another 5,433 virus cases found, day before 3rd lockdown; Health Minister intends to vaccinate teachers this week

By TOI STAFF
26 December 2020, 7:04 pm 1

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Saturday he sought to reach a vaccination rate of around 150,000 people a day within a week, and to have inoculated over 2 million Israelis by the end of January.

Israel’s population is about 9 million.

Though the Health Ministry had yet to issue updated figures after Shabbat, Channel 12 News reported that some 266,000 people had gotten the first of two shots by the end of the first week of Israel’s vaccination push.

At a pace of 150,000 vaccines administered a day, Netanyahu said that within a month 2.25 million Israelis could receive both doses of the vaccine. That amounts to over a quarter of Israel’s 9.25 million population.

“This is the critical stage… because this is the entire at-risk population: All the medical teams, all the people over 60. Within this stratum is 95 percent of the mortality. Once we finish this stage, within 30 days we can get out of the coronavirus [pandemic], open the economy and do things that no other state can do,” he claimed, echoing an assertion he made Thursday.

Health Minister Yuli Edelstein said in a statement Saturday night he would seek to vaccinate the country’s teaching professionals this week, to help protect them as schools remain open during a new national lockdown. …

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu predicted on Thursday that Israel would likely be the first country in the world to overcome the pandemic. “I want to tell you that the combination of the marvelous vaccine campaign on the one hand, and a short and quick lockdown on the other, is allowing us to get out of the coronavirus [pandemic],” Netanyahu said in a statement. “And we’ll likely be the first country to get out of [it], within a few weeks,” he added.

Israel is signed up for 8 million doses of the Pfizer vaccine and 6 million of Moderna, enough for 7 million people. Bahrain has been inoculating residents with the Chinese Sinopharm vaccine for more than a month.

[Comment at Unz.com]