Israel doing world a ‘great service' with COVID booster shots — PM

JERUSALEM, Israel (AFP) - Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said Thursday that Israel was doing the world a “great service’’ by administering COVID vaccine booster shots, despite the World Health Organization’s plea for a moratorium.

Nearly 60 percent of Israel’s 9.3 million people have had two jabs, mostly of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine, with the government recently rolling out a third shot for the over60s.

The WHO has called for a moratorium on booster shots until at least the end of September in order to address inequalities in global dose distribution.

When asked by AFP about the WHO’s position, Bennett said that Israel was doing the world a service in testing the shot on its population.

“Israel is going ahead here with something that dramatically contributes to global knowledge,” he said in a Facebook broadcast.

Stressing Israel’s relatively small population that “doesn’t significantly affect the global surplus, ‘’he said that the knowledge accumulated in the process would be “immediately shared with the entire world.”