Israel announced on Friday that it had signed an agreement with the American biotech company Moderna to purchase vaccines against the new coronavirus, which should be issued in 2021.
Read also: Moderna's vaccine gives at least three months of immunity
In November, Israel signed an agreement with the American pharmaceutical company Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech to purchase eight million doses of vaccines that could be delivered by early 2021.
“
We have signed an agreement with Moderna to receive six million doses of vaccines for you, citizens of Israel,
” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a short video posted on Twitter.
"
This is three times more than what was provided for in the original contract
" with this company, he said, adding to see "
the light at the end of the tunnel
" of the pandemic.
The vaccine requires two doses and three million Israelis will therefore be able to access it, the prime minister's office said in a statement.
Moderna has announced that it plans to have between 100 and 125 million doses of its Covid-19 vaccine available in the first quarter of 2021. Between 85 and 100 million of these doses will be reserved in the United States, and between 15 in 25 million to the rest of the world.
After a peak in contamination in September which saw Israel record one of the highest rates of Covid-19 infection in the world, the authorities imposed a containment which made it possible to reduce the number of daily cases.
The restrictions were then gradually relaxed.
A country of some nine million people, Israel has officially recorded more than 341,700 cases of infection, including about 2,900 deaths.
