Palestinian Authority launch vaccination campaign in high schools
Jerusalem, Aug 30 (EFE).- The Palestinian National Authority (PNA) on Monday started vaccinating high school students against coronavirus, with an aim to speed up a lagging vaccination campaign in Palestinian territories.
Some 255,000 students aged between 16 and 18 years in the occupied West Bank and the Gaza Strip are expected to get inoculated with Pfizer Covid-19 vaccine doses in the campaign launched by the Palestinian education and health ministries.
The vaccination drive in Gaza, implemented by the Islamist Hamas movement which has ruled the coastal enclave since 2007, is set to kick off Tuesday.
During the launch of the campaign at a Ramallah high school for girls, Palestinian prime minister Mohamed Shtayyeh urged Palestinians, many of whom are vaccine skeptics, to get immunized.
Thirty-eight percent of the Palestinian population have already been vaccinated, according to Shtayyeh, who urged the need to boost vaccination in the Gaza strip, where only 17% of residents are vaccinated compared to the 39.4% in the West Bank.
Gaza, with just over two million Palestinian inhabitants, recorded 1,354 infections in the past 24 hours, compared to 1,057 in the West Bank.
Shtayyeh explained that the PNA had purchased four million vaccine doses from Pfizer, in addition to the shots it received in recent weeks through the global coronavirus vaccine-sharing scheme Covax.EFE
sga/smq/mp
