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Israelis receive a Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine from medical professionals at a vaccination center set up on a mall parking lot in Givataim, Israel, during a nationwide lockdown to curb the spread of the virus, on Jan. 20.
How has tiny Israel beat out bigger countries on COVID-19 vaccinations, securing a steady stream of vials and inoculating a larger share of its citizenry than any other nation?
Israel paid a premium, locked in an early supply of Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines and struck a unique deal: vaccines for data.
The nation of some 9 million promised Pfizer a swift vaccine rollout, along with data from Israel's centralized trove of medical statistics to study "whether herd immunity is achieved after reaching a certain percentage of vaccination coverage in Israel," according to their agreement.