The Times of Israel reported that the director-general of Israel's health ministry, Chezy Levy, said in a statement that data collected by his agency also found the vaccine to be 99.2 percent effective at preventing serious cases of the disease.

The head of Gaza's health ministry said last week that the first doses of COVID-19 vaccines had begun arriving in the territory but stressed that the 2,000 provided fell far short of the number needed to vaccinate health care workers in the territory.