Unexpected vaccine transfer: Israel will provide around one million doses of Pfizer-BioNTech's Covid-19 vaccine to the Palestinian Authority, Prime Minister Naftali Bennett's office announced on Friday (June 18). 

In a joint statement with the ministries of health and defense, the office of the new head of government clarified that the Palestinian Authority had agreed in return to deliver to Israel an equivalent number of doses of the Pfizer vaccine from one of its own shipments due later this year. 

"Israel has signed an agreement with the Palestinian Authority and will provide around one million doses of the expired Pfizer vaccine and will receive in return the doses that the Pfizer company was to send to the Palestinian Authority," the official said. Prime Minister's Office and the Israeli Defense and Health Ministries in a joint statement.

"This agreement was made possible after finding that the stock of vaccines that Israel has in its possession meets its current needs," the statement said.

The Palestinian Authority, based in the occupied West Bank, did not immediately comment on this information.

Thanks to a vast vaccination campaign, launched at the end of December after an agreement with the pharmaceutical giant Pfizer, about 55% of the Israeli population, or more than 5.1 million people, received two doses of the vaccine.

On the Palestinian side, only 260,713 people received their two doses in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health.

From Wednesday to Thursday, 170 new cases of patients were identified in the two Palestinian Territories, bringing the total toll since the start of the pandemic to more than 312,000, including about 3,540 deaths, according to the Ministry of Health.

In Israel, 25 new cases were identified from Thursday to Friday, according to health authorities who recorded a total of about 840,000 patients, including more than 6,420 deaths.

With AFP

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