GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip (AP) — The Palestinian Health Ministry has started administering the first doses of coronavirus vaccines received from the World Health Organization’s COVAX program to health care workers and older people in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The World Health Organization and its partners running the COVAX program delivered 61,400 vaccines to the Palestinian Authority on Wednesday. About one third was shipped to the blockaded, Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip. On Sunday, healthcare workers in Gaza were among the first to receive doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech and AstraZeneca vaccines delivered last week. Even with the arrival of the vaccines, the Palestinian areas lag far behind Israel, where some 80% of adults have been innoculated.
