Palestinians receive first batch of vaccines through COVAX
More than 60,000 doses of the AstraZeneca and Pfizer/BioNTech vaccines arrived in Ramallah on Wednesday.
The Palestinian Authority received more than 60,000 coronavirus vaccine doses under the global COVAX scheme Wednesday after months of waiting to inoculate millions of Palestinians living in the occupied territories.
“Those vaccines being sent to the West Bank and Gaza will be critical tools in our fight against the pandemic and for socioeconomic recovery,” said the UN special coordinator for the Middle East peace process, Tor Wennesland.
The vaccinations were provided by COVAX, the World Health Organization's global vaccine initiative aimed at providing vaccinations to less developed countries. Over the next year, COVAX is scheduled to provide enough vaccines for a million Palestinians, roughly 20% of the population.
The vaccines — 37,000 Pfizer/BioNTech doses and 24,000 AstraZeneca doses — arrived in Ramallah on Wednesday. Roughly a third of the vaccine supplies will go to Gaza and the rest to the Palestinian Authority, which manages the autonomous areas of the West Bank.
