Some 210,000 Israelis over age 60 or who work in the medical profession have received the first dose of the COVID vaccine since Sunday, Health Minister Yuli Edelstein reported Friday.
A total of 74,000 received their vaccinations on Thursday alone.
"I thank the Health Ministry employees, the healthcare providers, the hospitals, Magen David Adom, and the IDF Homefront Command for their wonderful work," Edelstein said.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu expressed hope that by this weekend, 100,000 doses of the coronavirus vaccine would be administered in Israel daily.
Noting 65,000 Israelis were inoculated on Thursday, Netanyahu said the combination of Israel's vaccination campaign along with the country's third lockdown "will allow us to get out of the corona [pandemic], and we will likely be the first country to get out of the corona [pandemic] within a matter of weeks. It's a huge blessing."
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As for the government's decision to walk back a highly-criticized move that would have seen students and preschoolers end their school day at 1:00 p.m. during the lockdown set to go into effect next week, the prime minister said this was done "so that these students don't miss any schooling and also to make it easier on the parents."
In a press conference earlier Thursday, Deputy Health Ministry Chief Hezi Levy said the ministry's goal was to vaccinate 4 million Israelis by the end of March.
"We have enough vaccines, and I hope that we meet this goal."
To that end, Levy and Edelstein on Thursday night ordered vaccines be administered 24 hours a day, 7 days a week – including Shabbat.
According to Edelstein's directive, the Health Ministry will begin to enlist manpower for the broadening vaccination campaign, set to begin Sunday, to meet Netanyahu's goal of administering over 100,000 doses of the vaccine a day.
In a statement, the Health Ministry said Israel was in the midst of a health campaign the likes of which it has never known.
"In recent days, mutations that infect at a faster and unusual speed we had yet to encounter have been detected, and we are in a race against time. The more people we vaccinate, and quickly, we will save people's lives. The vaccines will save us all."
In a government meeting, Thursday, Intelligence Minister Eli Cohen raised the possibility of expanding the vaccination campaign to operate around the clock, earning the support of experts in the field. To reach that goal, the Health Ministry will enlist hundreds of medics, including reservists who served as medics or paramedics in the Israel Defense Forces, to its inoculation effort.
According to Health Ministry data, 3,958 of the 98,409 people who tested for the coronavirus were found to be carrying the virus, Thursday, for an infection rate of 4.1%. Israel currently has 33,808 active cases, 506 of which are serious. Of those in serious condition, 128 are on ventilators. So far, 3,171 people have died.
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