Jerusalem:
Israel is to provide about one million doses of Covid-19 vaccine to the Palestinian Authority in a swap as their expiry date looms, the Israeli prime minister’s workplace stated Friday.
“Israel has signed an agreement with the Palestinian Authority, and will supply approximately one million doses of Pfizer vaccine that is about to expire,” Prime Minister Naftali Bennett’s workplace stated, in a joint statement with the defence and well being ministries.
Israel “will receive in return the doses that Pfizer is to send to the Palestinian Authority,” the statement added.
The Palestinian Authority, based in the occupied West Bank, did not instantly comment on the deal.
“Israel will receive the same amount of doses of Pfizer in September/October 2021, on behalf of what is destined for the Palestinian Authority,” the Israeli statement added.
“This agreement was made possible after noting that the stock of vaccines that Israel has in its possession meets its current needs.”
Israel launched a sweeping vaccination campaign right after getting millions of doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine.
More than 55 % of Israel’s population — some 5.1 million people today — have received each doses of the vaccine.
On the Palestinian side, just more than 260,000 people today have received their two doses in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, according to the Palestinian well being ministry.
From Wednesday to Thursday, 170 new Covid-19 instances have been recorded in the West Bank and Gaza, bringing the total because the commence of the pandemic to more than 312,000, 3,540 of them.
In Israel, 25 new instances have been recorded from Thursday to Friday, bringing the total quantity of instances to 840,000, with more than 6,420 deaths.
The deal comes amid higher tensions amongst the Jewish state and the Palestinians, with violations of a fragile ceasefire amongst Israel and Gaza’s Hamas rulers that went into impact on May 21, ending 11 days of heavy fighting.
Late Thursday, Israeli fighter jets carried out air strikes on Gaza for a second time because the ceasefire. The military stated they have been in retaliation for 3 days of incendiary ballons launched from the Palestinian enclave.
In Gaza, the coronavirus response has been hobbled by last month’s fighting, which devastated infrastructure and decreased whole tower blocks to piles of smoking rubble.
()