ByJERUSALEM POST STAFF

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met with local authorities in the Arab sector and health officials to promote the coronavirus vaccination campaign among Arab-Israelis on Monday.

"I requested this meeting because the morbidity in Arab society is still soaring," said Netanyahu. "There is still a lot of fake news, and it is still necessary to vaccinate the general public, but first and foremost the elderly. Adults over the age of 50 bring almost 100% of death and serious illness, which burdens the hospitals and of course leads to tragedies."

"People are dying, people are suffering from diseases that can last a lifetime. By the way, this also happens to young people, so there needs to be a special mobilization of yours [by you] as public leaders," added the prime minister. "It's important to just mobilize and explain it, there is a huge amount of fake news: 'We put a foreign body in,' 'The vaccine is a foreign body that invades the body'. Not true – the foreign body that invades the body is the virus, it is the coronavirus. Without the vaccines people will die. Before the age of vaccines, people died en masse and the average life expectancy was between 30 and 40 years. Today it is double that, because of vaccines."Infection rates among Arab-Israelis have remained high on Monday, with the R number, which indicates how many people each infected person infects, standing at 1.12 – meaning that every eight people infect about nine others.

Netanyahu stressed that there are vaccines available for all citizens, with no exceptions.

"I ask you: mobilize! You leaders – you have influence," he said. "There are medical officials here as well, and I ask that they speak up as well. I ask that they explain this in Hebrew, in Arabic, in any way to the entire public: to the Muslim, Christian, Bedouin, Circassian and Druze public. Everyone needs to understand this, because the virus does not distinguish between us. It does not distinguish between any of us – it will attack anyone who is not vaccinated."

Also taking part in the meeting were Health Minister Yuli Edelstein, Interior Minister Aryeh Deri, director-general of the Prime Minister's Office Tzachi Braverman, National Security Council head Meir Ben-Shabbat, Coronavirus Commissioner Prof. Nachman Ash, Mayor of Modi’in-Maccabim-Reut and Haim Bibas, chairman of the Federation of Local Authorities in Israel.