Israel could begin overcoming the Covid-19 crisis after fully vaccinating a third of its population, Reuters quoted an official as saying on Sunday, indicating it would take some weeks more than previously thought.

Launching what has become the world’s fastest vaccine rollout on Dec 19, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu set protecting Israel’s most vulnerable cohorts — around 24 per cent of 9 million citizens — as the benchmark for a possible reopening of the economy in February.

But a projected mid-January turnaround in curbing the spread of the illness did not transpire. Despite a third national lockdown, cases and deaths have surged among the part of the population that has not yet been vaccinated. Officials blame this on highly communicable foreign variants of the coronavirus.