Israel will receive four million doses of Pfizer's coronavirus vaccine – a far greater amount than initially previewed – which are expected to arrive either by the end of December or the start of January, Hebrew-language media outlets reported on Thursday.
The first batch of doses will be enough to inoculate two million people, with a second two-million batch to be delivered later. Earlier estimates said that some 200,000 to 500,000 vaccines were likely to arrive in December.
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This comes a day after Britain became the first country to approve Pfizer's COVID-19 vaccine for general use, vowing to begin distributing the treatment by next week.
Britain's approval of BioNTech-Pfizer's vaccine against COVID-19 marks a "historic moment" in the battle against the pandemic, the US pharma group's chief executive said Wednesday after his company won the first such authorization in the West.
Israel initially intended to wait until the vaccine is greenlighted by the United States Food and Drug Administration; however, Britain's move may have convinced local officials to move forward with the preventive treatment.
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At this stage, no decision has been taken on how the vaccines will be distributed between Israel's various national health funds and hospitals.
This article was first published by i24NEWS.
