A. Long-standing characteristics of Israel that are extrinsic to health care | |
1. Israel’s small size, in terms of both area and population | |
2. Israel’s centralized national system of government | |
3. Israel’s experience in, and infrastructure for, planning and implementing prompt responses to large-scale national emergencies | |
B. Long-standing characteristics that are health-system specific | |
4. The organizational, IT and logistic capacities of Israel’s community-based healthcare providers | |
5. The availability of a cadre of well-trained, salaried, community-based nurses who are employed directly by the health plans | |
6. The tradition of effective cooperation between government, health plans, hospitals, and emergency care providers – particularly during national emergencies – and the frameworks for facilitating that cooperation | |
7. The existence of well-functioning frameworks for making decisions about vaccinations and support tools for assisting in the implementation of vaccination campaigns | |
C. More recent factors that are specific to the COVID-19 vaccination effort | |
8. The rapid mobilization of special government funding for vaccine purchase and distribution | |
9. Timely contracting for a large amount of vaccines relative to Israel’s population | |
10. The use of simple, clear and easily implementable criteria for determining who had priority for receiving vaccines in the early phases of the distribution process | |
11. A creative technical response that addressed the demanding cold storage requirements of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine | |
12. Initial outreach efforts |