The rate of COVID-19 vaccination in Israel is one of the highest in the world. However, vaccine rates are not evenly distributed among the different population groups. Arab citizens and the Ultra-Orthodox population, who have suffered the most from the pandemic, are vaccinated at lower rates than the general public. Moreover, social media disinformation campaigns that have characterized the COVID-19 pandemic in Israel, in general, and the vaccine, in particular, has been one of the causes of vaccine hesitancy.
The Covid-19 pandemic has become Chile’s most consequential public health challenge in a century. Chile’s measures included guidance regarding, among other items, education, health (sick leaves, diagnoses, hospital capacity, partial and spatially targeted lockdowns), mass events, border controls, supply and transportation. Since then, the evolution of the disease in the country has been similar to that of other countries around the world, with periods when cases increased followed by periods when cases declined, yet without ever declining to a point when one would assume the emergency was over.
The Covid-19 pandemic has shown that countries can marshal significant resources quickly and at scale in an emergency. The climate crisis requires no less. First and foremost, that means resolving longstanding issues of climate finance -- definitional disputes, access to financing, the obstacle of indebtedness, and underneath them all, trust that rich nations will deliver on their outstanding and new climate finance commitments. Only then can the international system ensure that the poorest and most vulnerable people, communities, and countries can make the necessary changes the whole world needs.
