On Thursday The Palestinian Authority (PA) said it had taken delivery of 150,000 doses of Pfizer vaccine, amid an upsurge of COVID-19 cases in the occupied West Bank.
A Health Ministry statement from the Ramallah-based PA said that of 4 million doses ordered from the pharmaceutical giant, 1 million have been received so far. The rest should be delivered in batches by the end of the year, it added.
At the end of last month, Health Minister Mai Al-Kaila had warned that the Palestinian territory was facing a fourth wave of the coronavirus, and urged people to be vaccinated because of the spread of the more contagious delta variant.
The government also indicated that unvaccinated officials would have to take unpaid leave until they had been jabbed.