Eli Cohen, acting Director General of the Clalit health fund, on Monday morning spoke to 103 FM Radio regarding the administration of a third dose of the coronavirus vaccine to Israelis aged 60 and above.
"We had a very busy day yesterday, and so far we've succeeded in vaccinating nearly 23,000 members of the target population within a day and a half," Cohen said. "That's an incredible pace, and we have appointments already set for another 115,000 people."
"We're seeing very good response from this population, and their understanding of the risk versus the option that the State has offered them. Most of the questions are on social media, but people understand that the State of Israel is a global pioneer."
Cohen emphasized: "There is no other country in the world that is in our situation, and so it's clear that in this situation, we're creating a world precedent. We need to remember that even though there isn't FDA approval for this process, there is a lot of research, and I think that everyone reads newspapers and sees the serious infection rates."
"According to Health Ministry statistics, we already have 90 seriously ill patients, half of whom are on ventilators, and about half of them are vaccinated, although among the seriously ill patients the number of vaccinated individuals is lower."
He added that Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett "wants this campaign to be as fast as possible. We are also preparing for this, and we're going to open additional sites. We're going at a pace of 20,000 a day, and we want to reach around 50,000 a day. These decisions are not arbitrary decisions. We need to monitor infections and see what their makeup is, and when it comes to seriously ill patients we see that there is a greater percentage of elderly people."