2 million planned to be vaccinated in Israel by end of January

Israel on Sunday said that two million people will be receiving a two-dose COVID-19 vaccine by the end of January. As per Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the vaccination drive will be the world's fastest.

Netanyahu's administration launched a fiery push on December 19 to administer the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine made by US-German pharma alliance.

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Hezi Levy, Health Ministry Director-General, said that they will slow the pace of the vaccination to keep some stock for the second dose.

"We are slowing the pace of vaccinations of the first dose so that we can keep reserved stock for a second dose for all those who got a first shot," Levy told public broadcaster KAN.

The doses need to be administered with a gap of three weeks.

"By the end of January, we shall have inoculated two million residents, most of them elderly," he said.

One million people have received the first dose of the coronavirus vaccine, as of Friday.

"We are breaking all the records," Netanyahu said Friday, during a visit to the Israeli Arab city of Umm Al-Fahm, where the millionth jab was reported administered.

"We are ahead of the entire world," the premier said.

The country of 9.29 million population has a total of 435,866 cases since reporting their the first confirmed case was reported in February. Almost 3,400 people have died, as per the country's health ministry.

The ministry said on Friday that it had confirmed 18 local cases of a new strain of coronavirus first detected in Britain.

(Inputs from AFP)