Gaza gets its first COVID-19 vaccine shipment: Officials
Shipment, sent by the Palestinian Authority from the occupied West Bank, included 2,000 doses of Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine, enough to inoculate 1,000 people in a two-shot regimen
Gaza received its first shipment of COVID-19 vaccines on Wednesday ater Israel approved the transfer through its border with the Hamas territory, Israeli and Palestinian officials said.
Gaza, where 2 million people live, has reported more than 53,000 coronavirus cases and 538 deaths.
The shipment, sent by the Palestinian Authority from the occupied West Bank, included 2,000 doses of Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine, enough to inoculate 1,000 people in a two-shot regimen.
“We will use the doses to vaccinate patients who had organ transplants and those who suffer kidney failure,” Majdi Dhair, a Gaza health ministry official, told Reuters.
“Medical personnel will not be vaccinated this time as the shipment is not enough,” Dhair said.
Shipment of the vaccine, via Israel, to Gaza had drawn criticism from right-wing Israeli politicians.
They had called on their government to make the transfer conditional on the release of two Israeli civilians believed held captive by the group and the return of the remains of two Israeli soldiers killed in the 2014 Gaza war.
But Israel, leading the world in the speed of its own vaccination programme, has also come under pressure from rights groups to do more to ensure vaccines reach Palestinians in territory it captured in the 1967 Middle East war.
Palestinian officials, blaming Israel, said a transfer planned for Monday had been cancelled.
Officials in the Palestinian Authority said they submited the vaccine transfer request to Israeli defence authorities soon ater receiving an initial shipment of 10,000 Russian doses in the West Bank on Feb. 4.
The delay highlights the challenges Palestinians face inoculating citizens across the West Bank and Gaza - two geographically-divided areas which are home to 5.2 million Palestinians.
Israel controls all entry and exit points to the West Bank and most of the coastal and land boundaries of the Gaza Strip, an enclave that Israeli troops and setlers let in 2005.
Palestinian Health Minister Mai Alkaila said in a statement that the PA sent 2,000 doses of the Russian Sputnik V vaccine through the Beitunia crossing between the occupied West Bank and Israel en route to Gaza. She said they would go to front-line medical workers.
Israeli lawmakers had debated whether to allow the delivery of vaccines into Gaza, which has been under an Israeli-egyptian blockade since Hamas, seized power from rival Palestinian forces in 2007. The Palestinian Authority administers parts of the West Bank and coordinates with Israel on security and other maters.
Rights groups say it has an obligation as an occupying power to share its vaccines with the Palestinians. Israel denies having such an obligation and says its priority is its own citizens.
The Palestinian Authority has not publicly requested vaccines from Israel and says it has secured its own supply through the World Health Organisation and agreements with drug makers.
More than 93 per cent of Palestinian eligible voters have registered for May legislative and July presidential elections, the first in 15 years, the electoral commission in Ramallah said on Wednesday.
The high rate reflects “awareness of citizenship rights and people’s thirst for the ballot box,” Palestinian Civil Affairs Minister Hussein Al Sheikh wrote on Twiter.
More than 2.8 million Palestinians live in the West Bank, a territory occupied by Israel since 1967, and two million people live in the Gaza Strip, an enclave ruled by Hamas.
Of these, more than 2.6 million, or 93.3 per cent of Palestinian eligible voters, had registered by the deadline late on Tuesday, said commission spokesman Farid Taamallah.
“We are proud of this result,” he said, adding that the registration rate for the last legislative elections in 2006 was 80 per cent.
The last Palestinian presidential election in 2005 led to the victory of the secular Fatah party’s Mahmoud Abbas.
The legislative elections the following year were won in Gaza by his Hamas rivals, a prelude to bloody clashes between the two camps.
Abbas signed a decree in mid-january this year to hold legislative elections on May 22 and presidential elections on July 31.