Looking at the current situation of the pandemic in India, people have now accepted masking as a part of their future. While masks have become a must-have accessory for almost every individual on the planet, Israel on the other hand has lifted its public mask mandate and shocked the world. Apart from lifting its public mask mandate, the Middle eastern country has also fully reopened its education system making all primary and secondary school grades return to classrooms.
While the news came out to be a big shocker for the world, everyone is curious about the fact that how Israel be able to achieve such a goal when many countries across the world are still struggling with the COVID-19 pandemic. The answer is quite simple: The mass vaccination drive in Israel.
Yes! Israel in its vaccination campaign has speedily inoculated a majority of its population against the coronavirus and therefore is leading the world today. Last week Israel lifted most of its coronavirus restrictions and announced the reopening of the country to vaccinated foreign tourists from May. Although masks will still be necessary for Israeli people in large gatherings and indoors.
Can India achieve the same?
According to various reports, since the pandemic started Israel recorded over 8,36,000 cases of the coronavirus and around 6,331 deaths. With such corona infected numbers, Israel successfully till date is able to vaccinate over 53 percent of its 9.3 million citizens with both shots of the Pfizer or BioNTech vaccine. While India on the other hand is showcasing huge diversity in the corona figures and therefore India’s ambitious COVID-19 vaccination drive is losing its strength and momentum.
Despite the rising number of corona cases in the country, India’s vaccination drive seems to slowed down. In the 12th week of vaccinations (from April 3 to 9), 22.6 million Indians got their first dose, the highest so far. The number was reduced to 18.6 million in the 13th week, furthering the claims that India was falling short of doses. Reports suggest that in order for India to inoculate around 70 percent of its population with the first dose by August 2021, India needs to double the speed of vaccinations.
Another major reason that India is facing towards accomplishing its goal of making the world’s biggest vaccination campaign successful is its huge population. The large population of the country is one of the biggest challenges that the country might face in order to achieve its goal of vaccinating its huge population. Apart from this, logistics of the supply chain, health workforce, transportation, storage, vaccine production and availability of the vaccine shots are other reasons that could also hamper the vaccination drive that’s currently going on India.
Corona crisis developed over time:
Israel for sure have marched ahead of many nations in its vaccination drive. The country’s stellar fight to curb COVID-19 is being greatly acknowledged and is getting rewarded in a way that Israel is now slowly moving back to a normal lifestyle with no masks on mandate and children going back to school. In order to reach this point, Israel in total faced three lockdowns and even received international criticism for not sharing enough of its vaccines with other countries, especially Palestine.
Israel started its vaccination drive in late December last year and has now passed the major threshold of its rapid coronavirus vaccination drive that is leading the world in doses per capita. While Israel is now slowly reopening the country, India is witnessing the second wave of the pandemic. India last year in March entered its first nationwide lockdown and with increasing number of COVID cases, different states in the country are enforcing lockdowns in order to contain the virus.
When Israel is planning to reopen the country, India is still struggling to curb the virus. India is recording its record high taking the caseload to 1.5 crore and 1.78 lakh people died so far. The situation in the two countries is vastly different, while one is preparing for a reopening, the other is gearing up for another lockdown. Although if India needs a reopening like Israel, it needs to focus on its vaccination drive and achieve its goal of vaccination around 70 percent of its population by August this year.