In the last week the total number of COVID-19 cases in Gaza have tripled, reaching 1,551 yesterday. The International Crisis Group warns that once Gaza reaches 280 new infections daily, “the number of people requiring treatment will exceed the capacity of local hospitals.”
Most of the Gaza Strip remains under lockdown for a second week as health officials scramble to rapidly increase testing while ordering Palestinians to their homes in attempt to slow the spread of the coronavirus.
The coronavirus in now officially running loose in Gaza and the scope is unknown.
Israel has been bombing Gaza for eight days straight, all as part of what Israel says is a response to incendiary balloons sent from Gaza into Israeli territory. “We’ve been through this countless times,” Omar Ghraieb, 33, a Palestinian journalist told Mondoweiss, “but it’s harder now with a global pandemic and the whole world falling apart, no electricity and no water.”
This last week has seen Palestinian COVID-19 infections continue on a grim path, at least in the West Bank where there are more than 2,200 new cases.
Palestinians joined Muslims around the world in celebrating the Eid al-Adha holidays on Friday. Tens of thousands of Palestinians took to the Al-Aqsa mosque in occupied East Jerusalem for Eid prayers in the morning — with each worshiper required to wear a mask and bring their own prayer rug.
Israelis and Palestinians are now three weeks into a virulent second coronavirus wave and the higher rates of infection are leading to worries over governance, a plummeting economy, and nightly protests outside of the Israeli prime minister’s residence.
This week the Palestinian Authority ordered nighttime and weekend curfews across the West Bank to slow the spread of the second wave of the coronavirus that is proving far more extensive and fatal that the first outbreak that began in March.
In one of the worst days since the coronavirus pandemic hit Palestine back in March, the Ministry Health recorded five deaths and at least 316 new cases in the occupied West Bank on Friday, July 10th.
Over the last week cases of COVID-19 have surged in Israel and the West Bank, prompting both governments to resume lock down measures in efforts to curb the second wave.