Data collection for Covid-19 rates in Palestine has continued to be challenging and contradictory; numbers out of East Jerusalem have been intermittently available “from local sources,” once again highlighting the differences in public health for East Jerusalemites versus the population in ’48 Israel. Occupied Palestinians, even those with residency permits, lack well-resourced, well-organized health and public health systems focused on their needs.

Gaza continues to be at a major disadvantage in the pandemic due to the borderline functioning of the health care system after years of siege and repeated Israeli assaults and exhausted medical personnel. According to the World Health Organizations, 61.7% of the target population is fully vaccinated in the West Bank, 32.3% fully vaccinated in Gaza. The rate in Israel is 66 percent.

The Jewish Voice for Peace Health Advisory Council (JVP HAC) fully endorses the recent report by Amnesty International (AI) on “Israel’s Apartheid Against Palestinians.” JVP HAC says, “Growing consensus on a state of apartheid and international pressure on Israel to cease violations of international law can greatly improve the health status and well-being of Palestinians… Preventable illness and suffering, limited access to health services, and physical and mental trauma among Palestinians are clearly related to conditions of life under occupation and violence perpetrated by Israeli government, military, police, and settlers.”

Given the infectiousness of Omicron, we can expect a major spike in infection rates, if not rates of severe disease, in the occupied Palestinian territories. Though according to the WHO, 27 Palestinians died of coronavirus in the past week, a downward trend since the most recent rise at the end of December and much lower than earlier peaks.

Covid-19 cases and positivity rates are rising in the occupied Palestinian territories, mostly from travelers who returned from abroad. Cases in Gaza are leading, and an increasing threat to the health care systems and hospitals is looming on the horizon, Jewish Voice for Peace’s Health Advisory Council reports.

A review of Mondoweiss’s coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic in Palestine over the last 19 months.

While the omicron variant of the coronavirus spread to 57 countries this week, Palestinians announced that so far, “Palestine is free of any infection with the new mutation.”

Palestinians have reimposed a state of emergency in an attempt to prevent the spread of the omicron variant.

According to a release from Al Mezan, a Gaza-based human rights monitor, at the start of September “38% of essential drugs and 22% of medical disposables were at ‘zero stock’” in Gaza.

In late August students in Gaza headed back to schools where many are learning in overcapacity classrooms with up to three sharing a desk, as educators grapple to find places for pupils whose schools were bombed during a recent escalation with Israel.