Israel is pressing ahead with its aggressive campaign of offering coronavirus boosters to almost anyone over 12 and says its approach was further vindicated by a US decision to give the shots to older patients or those at higher risk.

Israeli officials credit the booster shot, which has already been delivered to about a third of the population, with helping suppress the country’s latest wave of Covid-19 infections.

They say the differing approaches are based on the same realisation that the booster is the right way to go, and expect the US and other countries to expand their campaigns in the coming months.

“The decision reinforced our results that the third dose is safe,” said Dr Nadav Davidovitch, head of the school of public health at Israel’s Ben-Gurion University and chairman of the country’s association of public health physicians.

“The main question now is of prioritisation.”

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