Is the vaccine a light at the end of the coronavirus lockdown tunnel?

The situation in which we now find ourselves is a dual track of massive vaccinations taking place at the same time as the country shuts down again.

By JPOST EDITORIAL
GETTING VACCINATED at the Meuhedet city vaccination center on December 21. (photo credit: OLIVIER FITOUSSI/FLASH90)
GETTING VACCINATED at the Meuhedet city vaccination center on December 21.
(photo credit: OLIVIER FITOUSSI/FLASH90)
The campaign to vaccinate Israelis against COVID-19 is in full force – and by most accounts, there is huge enthusiasm to get the jab.
Since its launch at the beginning of the week, more than 100,000 people have received their first dose of the vaccine. Despite some hiccups, the stations set up by the health funds have worked efficiently to shepherd the multitudes through the process with a minimum of delay and confusion.
Tami Alkalai, the head nurse at Maccabi Health Fund, told N12 that “people are cooperating. They arrive on time and in an orderly manner. We’ve improved the waiting times... people will receive a response within seconds.”
On Wednesday, the Health Ministry announced that starting next week, hospitals across the country will also start to administer the vaccine. But even without those additional stations, Israel already ranks first in the world in the number of doses administered per 100 people. According to official statistics collected by Our World in Data published on Wednesday, Israel at 0.83%, and the UK at 0.74%, outrank all other countries by far.
“We’ve worked endlessly [to procure the vaccines], and now we’re seeing the results,” said Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.  
It is quite an accomplishment, similar to the feat Israel achieved at the end of the first lockdown in March, when the rate of infection dropped to tiny levels. Back then, Israel was touted as a world leader, and Netanyahu made sure to mention this during his regular prime time briefings.
But since that lockdown was eased in May, there was a second one due to rising infection rates that threatened to overwhelm the health system. Since late October, when that lockdown started to be eased, it’s been a race against time to see if a vaccination could be approved, supplied and administered before another shutdown became inevitable.
As the infection rate and morbidity continued to climb, the government was counting on the vaccine to make another lockdown unnecessary, so it did nothing.
But the situation in which we now find ourselves is a dual track of massive vaccinations taking place at the same time as the country shuts down again.
Corona czar Prof. Nachman Ash warned on Wednesday that there is no escape from closure. “If they [government ministers] had acted in accordance with our recommendations two weeks ago, it might have been possible to avoid it. But as we predicted, morbidity has risen significantly, including severe morbidity.”
Thankfully, even though it is late in coming, the government has correctly voted in favor of a Health Ministry proposal to shut the country down beginning Sunday for at least two weeks, or until there are no more than 1,000 new cases per day, down from a current level of nearly 4,000 cases per day.
According to Prof. Chezy Levi, the Health Ministry’s director-general, two weeks may not be enough time to lower the rate to the desired level, and he cautioned that a longer shutdown may be needed.
We, unfortunately, know very well what a shutdown entails. Starting Sunday, it will include restricting movement to no more than one kilometer from home, and all non-essential retail and leisure activities will shut down. Non-customer-facing businesses will operate at 50% and public transportation will also run at half capacity.
In contrast to previous lockdowns, preschools and grades 1-4 and 11-12 will open for part of the day.
The vaccine has finally shone a faint light at the end of the long, dark tunnel we’ve been staring into since March. But the exit from that tunnel is further away than we thought it would be. We will get there – but first, the shutdown regulations must be followed.
Frustration is certainly understandable, but like much of the rest of the world, Israel needs to absorb another lockdown – hopefully the final one that we’ll see during this dastardly pandemic – to stem the dangerous tide.
We must hope that a day will come in 2021 when we will be able to look back on the coronavirus pandemic as a phenomenon that we endured and overcame. But until that day arrives, we need to batten down the hatches, get vaccinated and follow the lockdown rules.
Here’s hoping it’s for just one more time.