Juno News - What can Canada learn from Israel’s vaccine rollout？

00:00:00.000 So Israel is leading the world in COVID vaccinations and they're one of the least damaged OECD

00:00:10.360 economies in the world behind only Norway and Ireland which means that they've done pretty

00:00:14.740 well all things considered. Now it's important to look at the Israeli example not only so we

00:00:19.800 can compare apples to apples when we're talking about the differences between Canada's successes

00:00:23.680 or failures and Israel's successes or failures but so we can understand what lessons there might be

00:00:28.440 that we can adopt here to make our vaccine rollout much much smoother and ensure that we get back to

00:00:32.960 normal as soon as possible. So a couple things to keep in mind first about the country of Israel

00:00:37.300 number one it is a very small country it's about the size of New Jersey so that in and of itself

00:00:42.640 would mean that it is much easier to ship the vaccine around compared to for example a flight

00:00:47.320 from you know Toronto to anywhere else Toronto to Quebec BC to Quebec wherever the vaccine is going

00:00:53.240 to be coming in you know you have to go maybe hundreds thousands of kilometers compared to

00:00:57.620 when it's maybe only hundreds at most and that's in the low hundreds. Additionally Israel is very 0.96

00:01:02.520 densely populated in that the population is very concentrated in a number of areas that would be

00:01:07.740 probably around Tel Aviv and Jerusalem you know there's some cities in the north but other than that

00:01:11.880 it's it's pretty sparsely populated mostly in the middle of the country which again makes it much

00:01:15.660 easier to deliver that vaccine. Additionally because Israel has faced so many military threats in the

00:01:21.500 recent history of the modern state since its founding in 1948 practically everyone is a reservist

00:01:27.300 and so the government is going to have contact information for almost all these people they're

00:01:31.020 going to have a way to reach out to these people these people might be trained in first aid or how

00:01:35.100 to administer vaccines and so a lot of people have volunteered to help with the rollout and that

00:01:39.080 has definitely assisted them in terms of manpower and its ability to administer the vaccine to as many

00:01:44.180 people as possible. Additionally Israel is a biotech powerhouse now a lot of people refer to Israel as

00:01:50.780 the startup nation and most people tend to think of sort of the you know traditional technology

00:01:55.340 technology kind of companies you know maybe something to do with the internet or some high-tech

00:01:59.220 military equipment but it is also a biotech powerhouse if you compare for example Canada to Israel

00:02:04.840 Israel has according to one study that I found about 550 biotech firms where Canada for a much larger

00:02:10.800 country much larger population has about 800 there is a company for example called Teva which you may

00:02:15.760 have heard of it is very popular in Canada a lot of our generic drugs are made through Teva and that

00:02:21.140 is actually an Israeli company the name means nature which interesting side note actually the word nature

00:02:25.520 does not appear in the Hebrew Bible even once but you know for example companies like that they are

00:02:30.900 operating in Israel and around the world and so Israel has a very very large biotech sector which has

00:02:36.820 definitely given it a lot of pull when talking to companies like Pfizer which again on the next

00:02:41.440 point the Prime Minister of Israel Benjamin Netanyahu has been on the phone with the CEO of Pfizer on a

00:02:47.220 very regular basis compared to Justin Trudeau which has not I think until today been on the phone and

00:02:52.980 this filming is on Thursday so that would be yesterday but the big difference is that Israel has been

00:02:58.920 very pushy about getting vaccine not relenting the Prime Minister is very insistent that the country will have

00:03:05.760 a normal Passover that's going to be around March the fact that there is also maybe an election going

00:03:10.660 to be happening around March may have something to do with it but they are very very insistent on

00:03:15.000 getting the vaccine and making sure that everyone is going to get one by March so the country can be

00:03:19.140 totally vaccinated totally safe by then so the question then is what can Canada learn Israel has 0.94

00:03:24.960 vaccinated over 3 million people already there's a lot of data that we can mine what can Canada learn

00:03:29.900 well the first thing we can learn is how and when to administer the shots as we know there are two

00:03:34.800 different shots so the first and then the second booster it turns out that people are far less

00:03:39.860 immune after the first one than many people thought and so we are learning and you see there are some

00:03:44.580 articles coming out of Quebec that we're learning that we cannot delay between the first and the second

00:03:48.480 that is very important to get people those second booster shots second we should learn to be

00:03:52.840 much more insistent about our vaccine delivery we've got to be on the phone with the CEOs of various

00:03:57.820 different companies pushing that we should get our deliveries get them on time maybe even get them early

00:04:01.960 something that is very important to ensure that we do have that adequate supply second the logistical

00:04:07.700 issue now I understand obviously Canada is a very different country than Israel just in terms of

00:04:11.660 size in terms of logistics in terms of structure but we have to put that infrastructure in place as

00:04:16.700 the Israelis have done early on that may require some of that infrastructure to sort of be idle even

00:04:21.240 though it is there in place even though they don't have vaccines but the fact that we have an

00:04:25.780 infrastructure in place will mean that when the vaccines arrive we'll be able to administer them much

00:04:30.700 easier and much faster and then lastly we need our leaders and we need people in this country to be

00:04:36.000 much more insistent that getting back to normal is a high priority if not the highest priority again

00:04:41.740 the prime minister of Israel Benjamin Netanyahu has made that the highest priority saying that Israel

00:04:46.500 will have a normal Passover march there's going to be an election so that's obviously part of his

00:04:50.340 calculus but they are very insistent insistent on showing that commitment to return to normal life so I

00:04:56.440 really hope that some of our political leaders will look at the Israeli example take whatever good they can

00:05:00.700 and maybe ignore some of the bad or ignore some of the pitfalls that they have fallen into

00:05:04.620 but definitely something we can learn I really hope that we will get our vaccines on time and get

00:05:09.680 everyone vaccinated before you know this the other side effects that are dragging on take their toll

00:05:15.140 and hopefully we can just get back to normal as soon as possible so

00:05:19.000 for TrueNorth I am Sam Ashkenazi thank you so so much for watching this video

00:05:22.480 I'll see you on next slide

00:05:30.400 please

00:05:31.660 find out

00:05:32.500 whether it's a problem

00:05:33.400 you

00:05:33.680 or

00:05:34.120 you

00:05:34.660 either

Juno News - January 22, 2021

What can Canada learn from Israel’s vaccine rollout？

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript