Palestine receives 150k doses of Pfizer COVID vaccine

Ramallah: Palestine has received delivery of 1,50,000 doses of Pfizer vaccine as the Covid-19 pandemic surged in occupied West Bank, reports Agence France Presse. On Thursday, the Palestinian Authority (PA) informed that it had taken the vaccine delivery.

In a statement from Health Ministry, the Palestinian Authority (PA), based in Ramallah, said that one million doses out of the ordered four million have arrived from the pharmaceutical giant Pfizer. The rest is expected to arrive in batches by the end of the year, PA said.

During late last month, the Palestinian Health Minister Mai Al-Kaila warned that the country was facing a fourth pandemic wave. He had urged his people to be vaccinated as the highly contagious Delta variant was spreading through the territory. The government also directed unvaccinated officials to take unpaid leave until getting vaccinated.

According to authorities, West Bank has witnessed 199 new positive cases on Thursday, while only a few cases a day were recorded in July. 2.8 million Palestinians populate West Bank. The cumulative deaths in West Bank stand at 2,503 out of 2,00,838 cases.

In Gaza Strip, pandemic casualties stand at 1,111 out of 1,17,985 positive cases. The PA has transferred 1,00,000 vaccine doses to Gaza, populated by 2 million people and ruled by Hamas, on Thursday. Nearly half of the delivered were Russian Sputnik vaccines and the rest Pfizer. So far, 6,26,300 people were vaccinated in the West Bank and Gaza together, while 4,27,000 out of them received both doses.