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FILE PHOTO: A medical specialist holds a vial of Sputnik V vaccine against the coronavirus in a department store in Moscow, Russia
RAMALLAH, West Bank (Reuters) – The Palestinians received 10,000 doses of Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine on Thursday to help jumpstart their COVID-19 inoculation campaign, officials said.
Health Minister Mai Alkaila told Voice of Palestine Radio the supply would be enough to vaccinate 5,000 people, who would each be given two shots.
The shipment was flown into Israel and transported from there to Ramallah, the Palestinian hub city in the occupied West Bank.
Alkaila said a shipment of vaccines from China would also be arriving, but did not specify a date or which vaccine. A batch of around 37,000 doses from the COVAX global vaccine-sharing programme is expected later this month.
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Palestinians wearing face mask attend a prayer at a mosque in Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip on January 10, 2021. Photo by Abed Rahim Khatib/Flash90
Palestinian health officials announced over the weekend that they had signed a deal with the AstraZeneca pharmaceutical firm and were anticipating the arrival of its first major vaccine shipment by the end of February.
“We’ve received a formal letter from the AstraZeneca pharmaceutical company that by February 15th, the vaccines will arrive in Palestine…between the middle and the end of the month,” Palestinian Authority Health Ministry spokesperson Kamal al-Shakhra told Voice of Palestine Radio on Saturday.
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Director of the ARIJ Applied Research Institute, Jad Isaac, said that the year 2020 witnessed the largest settlement attack since 1967.
The director said that 10,000 settlement units were approved in various places in the West Bank governorates, in addition to the legalization of dozens of settlement outposts.
Isaac added, in an interview with Voice of Palestine Radio this morning, that the occupation authorities are seeking from this settlement escalation to control more citizens’ lands and convert cities and villages on the West Bank into isolated cantons, and in return, linking settlements to each other, which represents an apartheid system.
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Joshua Shuman 12/31/2020
Nearly 150,000 have died in the region due to the coronavirus pandemic but vaccines boost hope for 2021
Undoubtedly the coronavirus pandemic surpasses all other comers as 2020’s top news story.
Responsible for the deaths of close to 150,000 citizens of the Middle East, the virus swept across the region, enveloping everyone and everything like the hot wind and sand of a khamsin. Every aspect of life – politics, economics, health care and military – has been changed in its wake.
By the end of 2020, three countries in the region placed among the top 25 countries with the highest publicly known coronavirus infection cases, according to the Johns Hopkins University coronavirus resource center.