Table 1 Factors that contributed to the early success of Israel’s vaccination effort

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