Israel received its first batch of Pfizer coronavirus vaccines on Wednesday morning, a day ahead of schedule.
The charter United Airlines flight, organized by the international courier company DHL, flew from Brussels with the initial delivery of between 3,000 to 4,000 vaccine doses. Hundreds of thousands of additional doses are scheduled to arrive on Thursday, and another million doses are scheduled to be delivered next week.
Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Health Minister Yuli Edelstein were at Ben-Gurion Airport to receive the shipment. Netanyahu spoke at a brief ceremony and said he would be the first in Israel to be vaccinated.
“We brought the vaccines to Israel!” Netanyahu later wrote on Twitter. “I intend to be the first in Israel to be vaccinated in order to set an example for all Israeli citizens.”
The vaccines were transported to Teva’s national vaccine storage and distribution center in the southern Negev. The facility is equipped with special freezers for the vaccines, which require storage at -70°C (-94°F). The vaccines must be used within five days of removal from cold storage.
The US Food and Drug Administration, yet to approve the Pfizer vaccines, is reviewing its trial data on Wednesday. Israeli health officials are expected to approve the vaccines following FDA approval.
(YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem)
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5 Responses
Not sure where the video is, it says in the title “WATCH”
While it’s nice for a leader to set an example, the FIRST to get the vaccine should be the doctors and nurses treating COVID patients in parking garages because the hospitals are over-filled.
Wait for the howls of denunciation that he will be first. He should be LAST, they will say. There are so many people who need it more than him. How arrogant of him to push himself to the front of the line.
Of course if he HAD said he would be last, the same people would make the opposite denunciation.
Netanyahu later wrote on Twitter. “I intend to be the first in Israel to be vaccinated in order to set an example for all Israeli citizens.” The first person to receive this vaccination should have been Rav Chaim Kanievsky, or if he still has antibodies, then Rav Edelstein.
They have more followers, so would set an even bigger example, as well as setting good policy of first vaccinating vulnerable elderly.
Don’t b fooled by bb.
Talk is cheap.
Probably got saline solution