Severe shortage of examination materials

620 new cases of "Corona" and 9 deaths in Palestine

A Palestinian nurse takes a swab to test for corona from a person in Beit Lahiya, northern Gaza.

EPA

Yesterday, the Palestinian Minister of Health, Mai Al-Keela, announced that 620 new cases of the emerging coronavirus and nine deaths were recorded in her latest data.

Al-Kailah said, in a press statement, that the city of Jerusalem had recorded, during the past two days, 170 injuries.

She added that Hebron governorate recorded the highest number of injuries yesterday, with a total of 119, followed by Nablus governorate with 83 injuries, and the Gaza Strip recorded 66 injuries, while the rest of the injuries were distributed in different areas of the West Bank.

The minister explained that there are 44 patients "in the intensive care rooms, including 14 on artificial respirators."

The Ministry of Health said, in a separate statement, that there is an acute shortage of examination materials to detect the Corona virus.

The ministry added in its statement: “Due to the destruction of a large amount of laboratory materials (100,000 examinations), due to improper storage prior to their arrival at the Ministry of Health, as a result of the delay in coordinating their entry, hundreds of samples have accumulated, since last Wednesday morning, in the Ministry’s laboratories.” .

The materials entering the Palestinian territories from other countries need to pass through border points controlled by Israel.

The ministry stated in its statement that it "pressured the private companies to supply laboratory materials to deliver the examination materials as soon as possible. It was expected to arrive on Wednesday in the afternoon or Thursday, and the medical staff continued to take samples on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday."

She said, “However, the company that won the bid to supply these materials could not deliver them, as it is binding on them. Therefore, examinations were performed on only the highest priority samples, which are samples of those with severe symptoms, students traveling, and those referred to hospitals, and accordingly it was lost. The rest of the samples were destroyed and were not examined due to the lack of necessary materials.

The database of the Palestinian Ministry of Health shows that the total number of infections with the Coronavirus, since its outbreak last March, reached 49,192, of whom 343 have recovered.

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