How has Israel become the world’s leading nation in the COVID-19 vaccination programme?
What lessons can the world learn from Israel on how societies can unlock their economies, businesses can reopen, and consumers can start to spend?
Interview with Yoram Tietz
Yoram Tietz is Managing Partner at Ernst & Young in Tel Aviv and Chairman of the friends of Sheba Medical Centre, Israel’s largest hospital, which was rated one of the top 10 hospitals in the world in 2020.
Interviewed by:
Marc Lauer
Market Head for Israel
William Haggard
Head of Investment Insights
As investors, we take a long-term perspective on the preservation of wealth. To do this, we must keep our gaze fixed on today and the future. As the global economy searches for an exit strategy to the pandemic, we take a closer look at Israel.
What are the key factors behind Israel's success in deploying the COVID-19 vaccine?
Israel has been fortunate in many ways, although I would argue its current position in the vaccination race is no accident. Its federal health system, concentrated geography, advanced data-sharing systems and leading research facilities mean it is an attractive candidate for vaccine providers like Pfizer and Moderna to partner with.
It’s important to understand that Israelis have access to their healthcare system via just four health insurance providers (HMOs), offering services through a network of highly localised primary care hubs. The limited number of HMOs with a high number of localised logistics facilities, coupled with an advanced military medical unit ready to help with distribution and administration of vaccines, have all contributed to getting Israel to the front of the vaccination race.
For the last 15 years, Israel’s health system has also been managed digitally – allowing patient records to be uploaded and shared so as to build a national picture of infection and hospitalization rates at high speed. This has proved to be a critical piece of health-tech infrastructure during the pandemic and has led to the creation of a state-of-the-art Israeli Covid-19 dashboard, which you can view online and provides readers with the latest vaccination statistics.
“The picture that is now emerging from Israel is the near elimination of hospitalizations for those who have received both rounds of the mRNA vaccines.”
Promising prospects
A study carried out during Israel’s third and largest wave of infections between 20 December 2020 and 1 February 2021 by its biggest healthcare provider compared 596,618 people who were newly vaccinated and matched them to unvaccinated controls. The study concluded that two doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine reduced symptomatic cases by 94%, hospitalization by 87%, and severe COVID-19 by 92%.
Reduction in symptomatic cases
Reduction in hospitalisations
What is the significance of Israel’s vaccination data for the rest of the world?
The importance of COVID-19 data from Israel cannot be overstated and sharing this data has been of paramount importance, not just to the world’s vaccination producers, but also for other governments looking to organize their vaccination programmes. For example, findings from the Sheba Medical Centre as to the efficacy of vaccine immunization against COVID-19 published in The Lancet in February 2021 generated world headlines, and helped governments assess the timeframes for administering first and second doses of vaccines.
Vital and timely evidence By analyzing the data of 9,109 healthcare workers eligible for vaccines at the Sheba Medical Centre between 19 December 2020 and 24 January 2021, Israel was able to give vital and timely evidence to national health authorities around the world on how to stagger the administration of COVID-19 vaccines in the face of vaccine shortages.
Most importantly, the picture that is now emerging from Israel is the near-elimination of hospitalizations from COVID-19 for those who have received both rounds of mRNA vaccines. The findings published in early 2021 were better than what we expected and have boosted public confidence at a time when governments need the trust of citizens for their respective vaccine programmes.