Israel, Syria in prisoner-for-vax deal; US deaths near 500,000
Israel has paid Russia $1.2 million to provide the Syrian government with coronavirus vaccine doses as part of a deal that secured the release of an Israeli woman held captive in Damascus, according to Israeli media reports.
The terms of the clandestine trade-off orchestrated by Moscow between the two enemy nations remained murky. But the fact that Israel is providing vaccines to Syria has drawn criticism at home.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said “not one Israeli vaccine” was involved in the deal. But he did not address the issue of whether Israel paid for Russian vaccines, and he said Russia insisted on keeping details of the swap secret.
Israel announced on Friday it had reached a Russian-mediated deal to bring home a young woman who had crossed the border into neighbouring Syria earlier this month. In exchange, Israel said it had released two Syrian shepherds who had entered the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights.
As part of the prisoner swap mediated by Moscow, Israel paid Russia to supply Syria with an undisclosed number of doses of the Sputnik V vaccine, according to reports.
The woman, 25, returned to Israel via Moscow. She hails from the town of Modiin Ilit. She reportedly crossed into Syrian territory from the Golan Heights. Her identity was not released.
Meanwhile, the United States was on the brink on Sunday of the grim milestone of 500,000 Covid-related deaths since the start of the pandemic, as the nation’s top virus expert warned a form of normalcy may not return until the end of the year.
“It’s terrible. It is historic. We haven’t seen anything even close to this for well over a hundred years, since the 1918 pandemic of influenza,” Anthony Fauci, chief medical adviser to US President Joe Biden, told NBC’s Meet The Press.
“It’s something that is stunning when you look at the numbers, almost unbelievable, but it’s true,” he added, as the toll on the Johns Hopkins University tracking website stood at 497,600.