Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was the first in Israel to be vaccinated in a live broadcast Saturday evening against the coronavirus at Sheba Medical Center in Tel Hashomer. He was joined by Health Minister Yuli Edelstein, who was second.
“This is a very great day for the State of Israel,” Netanyahu said upon his arrival at the medical center. “We have been fighting for almost a year against the most severe pandemic that humanity has known in 100 years. By the end of the month, there will be millions of vaccines here, and additional millions will come afterward. I asked to be vaccinated first, together with Health Minister Yuli Edelstein, in order to serve as a personal example and to encourage all of you to be vaccinated.
“We can exit this together and we will soon get started. I believe in this vaccine. Tens of thousands of people have received it successfully. The best scientists have approved it.”
Netanyahu and Edelstein were among the first world leaders to be vaccinated against the deadly coronavirus, joining US Vice President Mike Pence and his wife Karen, who were inoculated on Friday, and UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who has also been vaccinated as well.
In an update about an hour following the vaccination, Netanyahu said, “I feel great; go get vaccinated. We are emerging from the darkness of the coronavirus into a great light. I want to again thank the Health Minister, the Ministry of Health, all of the medical crews, MDA, the volunteers, everybody.
“It is precisely at this time that I ask that everybody be strict about the rules: Distance, hands, masks and avoiding gatherings. If everyone is vaccinated quicker we will thereby restore life to the normality that we knew quicker, especially the economy. We will invest more resources and efforts in order to restore what was. We need your help; it depends on all of us.
“If everybody cooperates, both in strictly adhering to the rules and in being vaccinated, we will emerge from this and it is very likely that Israel will be the first country in the world to do so.”